“SWEET SURROGATES” – Acclaimed anniversary performance to mark the 25th anniversary of Nico and the Navigators
Link to article: https://onlinemerker.com/berlin-radialsystem-sweet-surrogates-umjubelte-jubilaeumsauffuehrung-zum-25-jaehrigen-bestehen-von-nico-and-the-navigators/
"The soul is buried and suffocated... Rotten things glow pale on nightly paths.... And we are tired, art should excite us. Until we are raptured in the intoxication of empty agony." From Hugo von Hofmannsthal's "Künstlerweihe"
In Vienna, Paris, Prague and Berlin, completely unique, holistic theatre forms have emerged in recent decades that have redefined, explored, illuminated and celebrated the interaction of music, videos, dance, acrobatics, pantomime, poetry and literature in space, stage design and décor in independent mixtures, and continue to do so today in constant development. Poetry in word, image and sound and the human being in all its existential conditionalities and conceivable facets of the real and paradoxical serve as programmatic universes of experimentation and search.
The "Serapions-Theater" at the Odeon in Vienna, founded in 1973 by Ulrike Kaufmann and Erwin Piplits, the "Théâtre du Soleil", founded in 1964 by Ariane Mnouchkine, whom I admire above all else, has become an unmistakable brand, which provided unforgettable theatre evenings in the Parisian "Cartoucherie", an old munitions factory in the Bois de Vincennes, or the Prague "Laterna Magika", in which poetically enchanting effects are distilled from the elements of film, light, music and pantomime.
Founded in 1998 at the Bauhaus in Dessau and relocated to Berlin in 1999 (first Sophiensäle, from 2006 Radialsystem), Nico and the Navigators have been around for 25 years. Thanks to the creative duo Nicola Humpel (artistic direction) and Oliver Proske (stage), the ensemble has been able to conquer a top international position. They have created something like a fascinating Berlin world theatre. Movement choreography, breakdancing and acting are interwoven into a higher whole against the backdrop of moving image projections, which are mostly captured live with cameras placed at the side, front and above the scene, directly or digitally alienated, which amplify or multiply the stage action.
The music plays a very special role in the 38 productions to date. It is realised live by a great instrumental ensemble (violin Elfa Run Kristinsdottir, guitar Tobias Weber, drums, synthesizer and composition Philipp Kullen, piano Matan Porat, trumpet Paul Hübner) and the vocal trio Peyee Chen (soprano), Ted Schmitz (tenor) and Nikolay Borchev (baritone) and integrated into the dramatic action by the performers.
In the new production "Sweet Surrogates", the musical part is a rousing mix of pop (The Beatles, Rolling Stones), Billy May, songs (Bob Dylan, The Shivers), opera ('Ebben' from "La Wally" by Alfredo Catalani, Hans Sachs' mad monologue from Richard Wagner's "Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg"), Renaissance sounds (Barbara Strozzi, Heinrich Ignaz Franz Biber), classical modernism (Dmitri Shostakovich, Britten, Ravel, Vaughan Williams) and minimal music (John Adams, Philip Glass), the finally rediscovered sound-noise post-minimalist Julius Eastman ('Joy Boy') and Richard Strauss' "Morgen" turned out to be particularly flavourful, opulent and reflective of our lives.
Hugo von Hofmannsthal was 17 years young when he wrote the sonnet "Künstlerweihe", the third and fourth verses of which can be understood as the navigation points of the evening:
Recently my eye fell on Master Wolfram's book, Vom Parzival, and before me stood the curse that laments from the lost Grail: "Unseliger, was hast thou not asked?" In pity foreboding mute anguish free: That is the only true artist's consecration!
"Fin de siècle" mood, a "basic feeling of a cultural end time, characterised by the deep shaking of social, political and religious certainties, made the poet doubt his vocation until he wanted to discover it in Master Wolfram's Book of the Parzifal." (Dramaturg Andreas Hillger).
After a quarter of a century of working together, Nico and the Navigators wish to pause, determine their current position and reflect on their future course with this production, which addresses, among other things, intoxication as a civilising outlet and cement.
Art as a sweet substitute, as an exercise in mortality? I think that immersing oneself in artificial simulation, in fantastic stories told with great emotion in books, on stage or in paintings, beyond an everyday life that for many is exhausting or even grey, can enable people to take a short break from their own ego, to send it on holiday, so to speak. Moved by the eternal dichotomy of too much or too little, lack or excessive demands, hunger or gluttony in the literal or figurative sense, evenings such as 'sweet surrogate' allow us to trace the secret of the golden mean, to achieve a state of catharsis after compassion, completely relaxed, satisfied or positively agitated. Hillger puts it like this: "Defiance and consolation, excitement and reassurance lie close together here, the radical feeling of isolation is just as possible as the experience of maximum community."
To illustrate what has been said in 22 scenes, Nicola Hümpel has combined music (see above), texts by Ingeborg Bachmann, Charles Baudelaire, Walter Benjamin, Hofmannsthal, E.H. Lawrence and the Navigators as well as colourful cross-cultural action to create a sensually thoughtful to humorous chamber play in her specific stage language. "Senior ensemble member" of the Navigators Patric Scott spans the red thread of the action as a permanently buffoonish play director, cynical diabolus and smooth seducer.
Starmime Martin Clausen has the most extreme scenes to himself: In a creepy number, he is allowed to spit theatre blood and black bananas into a pulp and eat them from the stage floor before he begins to make music in his Adam costume.
At times, all the performers snuggle up to each other like puppies, compensating for the characters' forlornness with closeness. The fourth movement of Dmitri Shostakovich's first piano concerto is highly amusing. In a grotesque whirlwind of paper, stacks of sheet music are blown about by hand or the wind machine, taking the chaos of artistic creation by storm.
On the other hand, Florian Graul enchants with a highly poetic and virtuosically elastic breakdance number to Barbara Strozzi's "Che si poó fare" and the Spaniard Alba de Miguel puts on a breathtaking flamenco furioso. Tenor Ted Schmitz, who interprets the English-language numbers by Britten and Williams in a particularly heart-rending way, is allowed to sizzle erotically from man to woman and back again on a wheeled vehicle to "Beauty" by "The Shivers" ("I live off love, I feed off love, I breathe off love, I think of love, I drink of love, I sink in love,."). But the musicians also get their stage solos. Pianist Matan Porat, for example, can be admired in close-up and with the piano spinning from above in the excerpt from the second movement of Maurice Ravel's Piano Concerto in G major.
The series of images on a vertical screen stretched across the centre of the stage range from icy, foggy cold to rain and drops of water on glass to faces bathed in hallucinogenic colours or psychedelically blurred. Towards the end of the non-stop piece, the mood brightens with the heavenly 'Evening Song' from "Satyagraha" by Glass, Strauss' "Morgen" and "Here comes the sun" by the Beatles.
It turned out to be a great evening for an important theatre ensemble from Berlin's independent scene that is not only close to my heart. The enchantment and overwhelming effect has taken place, the spark has once again been ignited.
After a welcoming address by Matthias Moor, programme director of the Radialsystem, the anniversary celebration was followed by a moving laudatory speech by the most likeable and authentic cultural politician I know, Senator for Culture Joe Chialo. Olaf Schmitt, artistic director of the Kassel Music Days since 2016, honoured the artistic achievements of Nicola Humpel, Oliver Proske & Co. with his intellectually dazzling speech, just as the brilliant Annedore Kleist brilliantly dissected the depths and shallows of the genre in a witty and highly entertaining speech.
Conclusion: Berlin world theatre and virtuoso ensemble art at its finest. May "Nico and the Navigators" remain with us for another 25 years. The Senate Department for Culture and Social Cohesion - Department of Culture - is definitely willing to support them.