„Niemand stirbt in der Mitte seines Lebens“ (“Nobody dies in the middle of their life”)
Life intoxication and dance of death at Radialsystem: "Nico and the Navigators" play with mortality in their scenic concert
Suddenly it's winter. Not outside the Radialsystem, of course, where the party boats are sailing across the Spree, people are fanning themselves on the banks, and it's still hot in the evening. Inside, however, singers and dancers throw on furs and black coats, boas made of black feathers and dark hoods. As if they could thus protect themselves from death, the cold of dying and the fear of it. For they cross the field before the end of life, "No one dies in the middle of his life" is the title of the wide-ranging program of songs, ranging from time-honored music (John Dowland, Claudio Monteverdi, Bach) to a broad romantic midfield (Schubert, Tchaikovsky, Chopin, Mussorgsky) to the present (Lou Reed, Leonhard Cohen).
The company "Nico and the Navigators" around director Nicola Hümpel has been performing in Berlin for 20 years at ever-changing venues. Musicians, actors, dancers and singers are part of it, they work on theater and music history. The scenic concert "Nobody dies in the middle of his life" was premiered at the Konzerthaus Berlin in March. The relationship of death is changing, and this is reflected in music. Can one still imagine hanging up death masks of deceased family members today? asks actress Annedore Kleist. One of her monologues is about the concern for health, genes, sports, nutrition, stress management, wide-ranging are the topics, which in this context suddenly seem like a great device to keep the thought of one's own mortality far away. Yui Kawaguchi and Ruben Reniers have something archaic and grotesque in their dances. Often only their arms protrude from their fur costumes, their hands grasping like claws. They could be spirits mediating between the living and the dead. At times they brace themselves against the singers, offer resistance or tug at them, and the songs thus change their energy, intensify in expression. Rarely do they intervene with an illustration, then they become a powerful, almost folk-dancing couple. This is the case in "Dance me to the end of love", the place a mortuary, where to the right and to the left already lie the dead.
It is not only sadness and melancholy that is transported by the songs. But sometimes also an unexpected friendship with death, a waiting for it, a welcome. When the soprano Julla von Landsberg sings "Komm großer schwarzer Vogel" by Ludwig Hirsch, always interrupted by laughter, it is of incredible approval. On the other hand, when tenor Ted Schmitz, in the 1878 aria "Vorrei morire," imagines wanting to die on a spring day as the birds sing, one may be enraptured by the lyrical mood, but then stumbles over too much sweetness and transfiguration. When the baritone Nikolai Borchev sings "Life is a dream" by Joseph Haydn, we are asked by Ted, it doesn't sound like a beer advertisement now, one wouldn't have thought of it oneself just then. The feelings ignited by the music already take up the most space, but how they comment on each other, or occasionally veer off from a direction just taken, makes things more exciting. However, the evening is long, and one does not always understand the texts, which can all be read in the program booklet. It is good that the musicians and dancers have made their own way through the material and that one can simply leave oneself to their guidance over longer passages and enjoy the dance and their music without thinking about death.
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