Baroque mating dance

Magical creatures, story-tellers and furry animal fetishists – with its production “Anaesthesia” the ensemble of Nico and the Navigators and Franui has developed a round dance full of strange encounters in the Orangerie at the Herrenhausen festival. Nicola Hümpel’s Berlin-based theatre ensemble has put together a pasticcio opera on the occasion of the 250th anniversary of Georg Friedrich Handel’s death. Three singers, six poets of dance and movement as well as the Austrian musicians of Franui whisk you away for almost two hours into a baroque picture book, a gallery of strange faces and characters that could have come straight out of a midsummer night’s dream. Anything is possible in this mating dance, since the creatures operating within it have no defined form. Cat, crow, cannibal – as volatile as tigers, the actors indulge in their desires, whether that be a dog-like race to copulate or playful finger theatre. Yui Kawaguchi eclipses all others with her fascinating transformation arias. All of which has something to do with Georg Friedrich Handel, since he himself used pasticcio extensively during his time as opera impresario in London. Whenever an audience tired of a show, he would replace a few sequences with other pieces from his enormous repertoire. This cheerful capriciousness also reigns in Anaesthesia. The eleven-man Franui ensemble accompanies the ecstatic goings-on on stage with a pot-pourri of twenty-four of Handel’s best-known works for the stage. Arias, choruses and instrumental pieces remain at times close to the Handel standard and at others move far away from it – not for the least because the ensemble uses the saxophone and accordion, hardly typical instruments for baroque music. Such a complete piece of art arises from the foundations of baroque forms thanks to careful staging. It approaches Handel and his time with respect yet at the same time views him from the perspective of the present day, with a wondering devotion and a cheeky sense of distance.