Niemand stirbt in der Mitte seines Lebens – Thoughts in 5 courses on the premiere of the Staged Concert
Beforehand: Amuse-Esprit, with the kind support of Wikipedia
Navigation - from lat. navigare (leading a ship), sanskrit navgathi - is the "art of steering" on water, on land and in the air ... Steering is preceded by two geometric tasks: establishing the current position (...) and determining the best route to the destination ... Navigation in the most general sense includes other aspects, such as the sense of balance and spatial awareness. It can then be defined as finding one's way in a topographical space in order to reach a desired location.
With dance, performance, acting and music, Nico & The Navigators have established "helmsmanship" in the element of the stage, as finding one's way in the open space of human existence.
Appetizer: Back to the roots, own harvest
The first time I wrote about Nico & The Navigators was in June 2000. At that time the company presented "Eggs on Earth" in the Sophiensaele: Nicola Hümpel founded this small company in 1998 at the Bauhaus in Dessau, meanwhile it is based in Berlin, "Ich war auch schon mal in Amerika" was the name of the first piece, still developed in Dessau, then came "Lucky Days, Fremder", and now therefore "Eggs on Earth". And with this, only their third production, the troupe finally crosses the border from insider tip to scene greatness ... If "Nico & The Navigators" continue like this, nothing should stand in their way on this path.
Last year, in 2018, the company celebrated its 20th anniversary. A miracle, in view of the equally enormous and lasting financing problems with which the free group - regardless of its artistic successes - has to fight to the death. Over and over and over again.
In the anniversary production "The Future of Yesterday - Menschenbilder 2.0," the "Navigators" compared their dreams and fears of yesteryear with those of today, and their expectations and hopes for the future.
Reveling in memories became a reflection on the past, present and future. Walking a very fine line between pathos and nonsense, melancholy and lightness, instinct and intellect, Nicola Hümpel, her congenial stage and costume designer and life partner Oliver Proske, and their fellow performers, the Navigators, have always playfully explored existential questions, drawing from the fund of their own experiences and developing the pieces from the improvisations "guided" by Nico. They call them human images. Or landscapes of thought.
Love, friendship, family. Decisions, aberrations, fears. Happiness, unhappiness. Longing, strangeness. And now: death. And the life before it. Eros and Thanatos. No more and no less.
Main course: the new piece, self-tasting
Wavering figures approach from the edges. Lemur-like black shadows. Ghosts without bodies, only extremities: Hands, feet. But they have a voice, And they sing: Matthias Claudius' "Abendlied," set to music by Johann Abraham Schulz (1747-1800)
You finally want to take
From this world take us
By a gentle death!
And, when thou hast taken us,
Let us come in heaven, Thou our
Lord and our God!
No, wait a minute: heaven can wait. After all, there's still dancing and singing to be done. No life without death. But also no death without life. No loss without gain. Before the dances of death comes the intoxication of life. But do you celebrate life only when death is already breathing down your neck? "Nobody dies in the middle of his life" because: who knows where it is, the middle, if you don't know the end?
Is death the end? Is it a spectre? Or a savior? And do I have to cry at grandpa's funeral even though I'm just hungry? (asks Matan Porat, musical director of the evening).
The reservoir of thoughts and feelings, personal experiences, philosophical profundities and artistic to humorous expressions is almost inexhaustible. I have just been to another funeral followed by a funeral feast. But how can this be summarized in a theater evening, which must have a beginning and also an end? And a manageable duration. Two hours. One intermission. Drinks can be ordered in advance. I can't say it any other way: but these Navigators have once again proven their "helmsmanship". What seems to be so dreamlike safe is hard, creative work. The program booklet says, "Search till it crunches."
Ingredients and side dishes, New Remixes
The theater space has walls, the play knows no boundaries. Not in time. Not in space. Not geographically. Not cultural. Not national. Not ethnically or religiously anyway. The navigators of this production are from here, Israel, USA, Italy, Russia, Japan, Indonesia/Netherlands. They speak different body/languages and are easily able to form an ensemble. To communicate, to cross-fertilize, to enrich.
The movement vocabulary seems almost inexhaustible, including dervish ecstasy and computer game-like jerkiness. With the new navigator Ruben Reniers, the expressive Yui Kawaguchi has found an adequate partner. The musical spectrum of this "staged concert" spans 400 years. Respect for the original does not exclude contemporary appropriation. Beat the drum and do not be afraid .... The oldest pieces date from a time when most people still believed that the sun revolved around the earth and not vice versa. From Monteverdi, Bach, Handel, Beethoven, Mozart, Rameau, Schubert (no Nico piece without Schubert!!!), even Ligeti to Hank Williams, Paul Simon and Rufus Wainwright. And Leonard Cohen: His "Dance Me to The End Of Love" is sung by Julia von Landsberg and Ted Schmitz in a duet, so driven with Balkanese drive Matan Porat ( piano), Elfa Rún Kristindottír (violin) and Wilfried Holzenkamp (double bass & electric bass) that he himself would probably hardly recognize his work.
Later, Julia von Landsberg, the soprano, still celebrates in appropriate dialect and shrill-grotesque performance the legend of the Austriak affinity to morbidity with the legendary dark-grey song by Ludwig Hirsch: "Komm, großer schwarzer Vogel" (Come, big black bird), which in its time was no longer played on Austrian radio after 10 p.m. for fear that listeners might be inspired to commit suicide.
And then we fly up,
right into the middle of heaven,
into a new time, into a new world.
And I will sing, I will laugh,
I'll shout "No way!"...
Annedore Kleist with her down-to-earth diction develops the chain of evidence extraordinarily comforting for the spectators that none of us spectators would be disposed of on the spot, even if he died during the performance, but would be allowed to stay until the final applause.
What color is death? Black? White? Does he wear a hood? Pants? Skirts? Everything. Sometimes like this. Sometimes like this. From black animal skins to white teddy coats, or just arm warmers to angel robes. Everything thereby.
It is also spoken. Annedore Kleist, the actress among the Navigators, quotes Christoph Schlingensief: "I'd love to just shout to everyone how great it is to be on Earth." Or: "that hatred is not worth it."
Dessert: Two-fer from the Total Eclipse, served hot as hell.
1743: Aria of Samson. Music: George Frideric Handel - Lyrics: John Milton
1981: Aria of Klaus Nomi. Songwriter: Kristian Hoffman.
Ted Schmitz - singing both into each other - once again outgrows himself.
Phillipp Kullen stages a last wild rebellion on his drums.
Then a persistent violin note by Elfa Rún Kristinsdóttir, like the exit signal of a hospital machinery.
Hello Darkness. Just Silence.
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