Piano strings and glitter things

Objects in motion produce sounds. The piano string is the most obvious example. Human bodies differ little from other objects in this respect. Except that their vibrations are called dance rather than music, and when they make music, the movement recedes into the shadow of the instrument. How much escapes such categorizations, how little the music merely accompanies the dance, and how musical a body in motion is, is shown by Yui Kawaguchi and Aki Takase in "Chaconne". Seen in the Sophiensaele in Berlin. The room, which Kazue Taguchi has equipped for this piece with only a grand piano, a few glittery things and many small light sources, demonstrates another physical truism: objects in the light produce reflections. Some less, some more. And the latter, when also made to vibrate (i.e., sound), create a constantly changing, multidimensional space that is more than a stage. A whole city of objects and sounds, bodies, movement, change, light. "City in the Piano" is aptly called in the subtitle. The two Japanese performers populate this city very cautiously at first. Almost as if in slow motion, each explores the possibilities that her own body offers to fill the space. Here a few notes from the belly of the piano, there a cautious step into the light, a turn on its own axis. Joint test. Establishing contact. The virtuoso pianist Takase gains a foothold more quickly, allies herself with the keys and challenges her instrument by plucking at strings, preparing them with objects and eliciting quite unfamiliar sounds from the piano in the process. Kawaguchi, meanwhile, stalks as if remote-controlled. It doesn't seem to be her body that is actively dancing, rather it is something else that moves it and strikes her. Something like a hiccup that wants to get out and therefore throws her across the stage in ever larger orbits. She surrenders to this something with her characteristic comedy and makes her own what it seems to dictate to her. A bit of tap dancing, a bit of Schuhplattler, a pair of shoes finds its way to her feet, eventually everything about her dances - right down to her eyeballs and the ends of her hair. The clapping on Kawaguchi's body, her feet on the floor, and her breathing blend into the soundscape. Takase's exertions on the keys complement the choreography. The light installation, which in the finest ZERO tradition creates ever new whimsical forms from the simplest of means, conjures up playmates of light and shadow on the walls for the two every now and then. From the very beginning, the audience is connected to the action in the room by the all-flooding light concept. It becomes even more literally connected when Kawaguchi knots a line, from the piano string, around a chair leg, a column in the room and - of course - his own body, until a net stretches through the room, shimmering and vibrating in the light, like the piano strings. Or like the power supply line of a nocturnal poetic city.

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