Nico and the Navigators, this is one of the German dance theater troupes, known especially for the desire of the boss, choreographer Nicola Hümpel, to explore, illuminate, illustrate the world of music through dance. Tonight, Nico and the Navigators invite you to a Berlin premiere. With their performance SILENT SONGS into the wild and they invite in Berlin to the Konzerthaus. Frauke Thiele could already explore there what to expect. F. Thiele: There is a strong melancholy in the concert hall, which of course has to do with Schubert's music itself. With the references to the theme of flight that the evening SILENT SONGS into the wild found in Schubert's songs. But the strong melancholy also arises, of course, from the topicality itself. N. Hümpel: Today is no longer yesterday. And quite extremely so. Germany has changed today, and we will certainly think of this evening from this point of view. We can't help it. If you think about it: We have united 7 nations here, which meet on this stage in an affectionate way and that makes you think, when it comes to these topics of foreign infiltration and so on. The evening means a lot to us as a team. F. Thiele: The 4 singers and 3 dancers wander around the stage a bit perplexed. In normal everyday clothes, in different shades of blue and gray. The scenery has nothing of a brilliant song recital of the classical kind. Even when baritone Nikolay Borchev steps up to the piano, a small dark blue fur boa casually around his neck, it has at best an ironic note - but without losing any of its melancholy. The idea of linking Schubert's songs with the aspect of loss of homeland came to Nicola Hümpel two years ago when she was working on Liedgut with students in Munich and the first streams of refugees had just arrived there at the train station. She asked singers from her pool of Nico and the Navigators to approach Schubert's songs from this aspect in a completely new way. N. Hümpel: That inevitably goes hand in hand when you hear these texts today by Heine and Müller. And in addition, of course, there are all these themes such as farewell, the search for home, eternal strangeness, loneliness, the longing for security. All these concepts are permanently present in the lyrics and in his music. F. Thiele: The singers chose songs themselves, sang them first, and amazing, very different subtexts soon crystallized. As in the case of the singer Sarah Laulan, whose parents fled Algeria as children and who had grown up with these stories of flight. When she sang Wanderer, first a subtle Arabic sound note emerged, then a lament, which Nicola Hümpel allowed to emerge. It is these personal moments that make the singers not only singers, the dancers not only dancers, the musicians not only musicians, but people with personal stories, different worlds of experience and associations on the subject of foreigners, home or farewell - also reflected in poems, quotations and very personal stories. The singers seem to sing directly to you or even speak to you, you see them enlarged and crystal clear on the screen. They look directly into one of the static cameras left and right of the stage and their faces and postures are mixed live in concert onto the two large screen surfaces. Often the dancers' movements are set directly against them, enhancing the expression. N. Hümpel: We feel very concretely addressed ourselves and basically what happens now on stage is what I always experience so wonderfully in the rehearsal room, and what often then gets lost in the big halls. Namely this incredible intimacy, the cameras are very, very intimate. F. Thiele: One could call it informal, how Nico and the Navigators approach the well-known Schubert songs, also again and again with humorous notes - when the dancer winds herself around the singer and thereby underlines the content of the devotedly sung love song with a languorous look and lets it become quite vivid. A song evening of associations - loose and yet leadenly heavy, with exuberant moments and yet deeply sad, like reality and like Schubert. Nicola Hümpel is convinced that bringing him into the here and now is a necessity - if we want his music to be preserved: N. Hümpel: "Schubert is there for everyone, Schubert was one of us, Schubert was not elitist and I would like to see such a cultural heritage preserved by simply performing it in a more contemporary way and I am firmly convinced that Schubert would be happy about that.

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