Online premiere: ‘Force & Freedom’ by Nico and the Navigators

Music and theater and dance and performance, the stage works of Nico and the Navigators are usually image-saturated and thought-space-opening productions in which all of this flows into one another. One is amazed and looks at oneself smartly. Of course, Nicola Hümpel and her company also wanted to join in the commemoration of Ludwig van Beethoven's 250th birthday - but, well, it all turned out differently this year. "Force & Freedom" is the name of the project idea with the Kuss Quartet. External constraints and internal freedoms in Beethoven: that was the motto, which now unintentionally also fits the Corona year. The premiere and performances at the Berlin radialsystem are cancelled; but the stage project has now become a film, which will be shown tonight on ARTE Concert. Frauke Thiele was there during the filming. FT: There are no audience seats in the Great Hall. Instead, there is a large podium with screens, mixers and cables. Incredible concentration and also euphoria can be felt. Collaborate. Finally. Camera, lighting, stage, costume, direction, etc. Everyone wears FFP2 masks; except the artists on stage. Everyone is tested - every day anew - just no risk. NH: "We couldn't have imagined how severe everything would get and how blatant this pandemic would be for the artistic scene as a consequence. That's why, of course, this piece is insanely existential for us. Because Beethoven also had this terrible situation of being in constraints, concerning his deafness; although he loved the sociability. This being deprived of people and not being able to share art together, that's terrible, and of course we know that now in the first place. FT: Nicola Hümpel is a director and the brains behind Nico and the Navigators. This is her first time directing the film. To make sure everything works, she brought in an experienced colleague. They spent days in video conferences discussing how they could bring the staged Beethoven concert "Force & Freedom" into a film language at such short notice. Today, the four musicians of the Kuss Quartet and the dancer Yui Kawaguchi perform the first and second movements of Beethoven's String Quartet Opus 135 - his last work. Several times in a row, each scene, they play for the camera. Until it fits. Almost like a CD production. Oliver Wille from the Kuss Quartett: "What's new is that we are also seen. And that the interpersonal actions we've come up with, that they really have to be played every time, just like the instrumental stuff, as ready for recording as possible. The musicians sit barefoot on a kind of reclining half-moon, later they also stand on it, like on a seesaw. The dancer Yui Kawaguchi prances into the hall, then twists her arms, as if tied behind her back. Suddenly, a flirtatious wave in the direction of the musicians. Movements, like states of emotion, change incessantly, as in the music of Beethoven. OW: When we play without Yui, we now always have Yui in mind, and since then we play this work in a more speaking way, even more rhetorically. Which is incredibly beneficial to this music. FT: Nicola Hümpel sits in front of the hall in front of large screens with different camera settings. She gives the instructions for the camera on the crane through the microphone. The camera on the crane follows the dancer in close-up as she sneaks around the musicians and suddenly jumps forward between them, circling around her own hands on the floor in a breakdance-like manner. NH: We are currently trying to make the music more listenable. With the necessary fun, but also with the necessary abysmal depth. And the experiment, of course, is always to try not to image it, but to create a dialogue between the body and the musicians. And also the musicians move freely, play by heart, which is anything but easy with these insanely heavy works. But because of that, it lives differently and grasps space in the 21st century. FT: The cameras capture everything. The bare feet from the Kuss Quartet. The dancer silently screaming out her agony. The musicians finally bobbing on the crescent moon as they play. All Beethoven. Tomorrow, the dancer will be joined by a performer and a singer - word quotes from Beethoven, also little song fragments, live and from the video screen, electric guitar - very subtle. NH: Well, we don't want to chip him (Beethoven). But we are also allowed to think of him in today's context, in terms of current feelings and contemporary aesthetics. OW: That is the great art that these composers understood - and Beethoven in particular. They are so strong in themselves, by their nature, that they actually embody everything that being human means.

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