Life's substance can be pulled this way and that, thrown about, piled up and dissected. Through a sober recognition of the body's materiality, this piece tries to understand the fundamental split imposed on us by our physical nature. It interrogates cultural templates for movement, brutal forms of pleasure, enhanced performance and cosmetic improvement: the body regarded as a resource. Why do we treat our fragility with such severity? Why do our accounts of our own bodies always bypass what we actually feel? Naked to the skeleton, to the kidneys, the piece submits the body to an even more radical undressing: the removal of the names which afflict and conceal it at every turn. Twisting and turning the body, taking it down wrong paths, over and over again this choreography begins the work of a genuine making-visible. The body appears as something never before seen.
In 1999 Sasha Waltz started working on her three-piece choreographic cycle about the human body. In “Körper”, following up this extraordinary research, she investigates the anatomy and the physical appearance of the human being, relating her dancers‘ bodies to architecture, science, and history. “S” searches for the origin of life, of Eros, and of sensibility. “noBody” asks about the metaphysical existence of humanity.
Körper means bodies. “Körper” engages twelve dancers in a particularly rich variety of movement. Linking architecture and body, Körper asks the questions: What is the body? How is it constructed? The dance analyzes morality, the quest for immortality, and investigates reproduction in the age of genetic manipulation. Sasha Waltz looks at the bodies in everyday situations. She beserves their matter, their nudity, their rhythms. “S” represents the middle section of the “Körper Trilogy” by Sasha Waltz. While sexuality and Eros are all but absent from “Körper” and “noBody“, with “S” they constitute central themes. The New York musician Jonathan Bepler, composed the room-encompassing original music for the production.