“It is Marco Goecke‘s eleventh creation for Nederlands Dans Theater, but the first in the recently opened Amare. There is a new smell in the huge building, heavy doors connect the countless rooms with the long corridors, and construction pits are still being filled in here and there. Impressed, you look into the light-flooded studios on the second floor and of course, at the same moment, you remember the old rehearsal rooms in the Lucent Danstheater, the familiar dark Studio 5 in the basement that had no windows, the many impressions that remain even after the demolition. What may have happened to the good house spirits? Have they also moved to the new building? Nine dancers go in search of them with Marco Goecke. “Try to remember”, sings Harry Belafonte. The dancers move to this song at a rapid pace, using Goecke’s language of movement to track down not only the dark and unknown, but also many memories: familiar gestures that are evoked from earlier spaces and earlier pieces, like protective ghosts.
One dancer brings another one to the front of the room, carefully grasps her wrists. “Somebody plays you,” Goecke says to her in a rehearsal. And later to another dancer: “It’s a bit like what is said in Das Geisterhaus: ‘Don’t touch her, she’s dead’”. Like when Goecke conjures up ghosts. And when the dancers whisper something that sounds like “I love you…”, you are no longer sure whether they are quoting the phrase “I love you so” from Belafonte’s Danny Boy or whether they are saying “I love you, ghosts” in order to connect with the invisible.” – Nadja Kadel