HAMBURGER ABENDBLATT (AUGUST 25, 2019) THE LAST BIG WORLD PREMIERE IS ONCE AGAIN GREAT DANCE Summer Festival: Two Projects at Kampnagel and in the Elbphilharmonie

Hamburg. The International Summer Festival 2019 at Kampnagel already counts around 35,000 visitors before the final concert on Sunday evening, roughly as many as in 2018. The last big world premiere will once again be great dance.

In eight weeks of rehearsal work, "#WTF Where There‘s Form“ was created by Canadian choreographer Aszure Barton and Düsseldorf musician Hauschka in Hamburg. Green and white ribbons are stretched in zigzag through the large Kampnagel hall. The stage seems open and bright as seldom. In the foreground the musician Volker Bertelmann, aka Hauschka, sets the beat on the prepared grand piano. He conjures up hypnotic rhythms from the instrument peppered with metal parts, supplemented by electronic samples and Insa Schirmer‘s cello playing.

Too beautiful, too harmonious

In this pointed spinning top of tones, the dancers - at first dressed in white with dark socks, later a little more in color - also appear a little like astronauts. They take up the bars in the tradition of minimal music, grouping themselves into ever new geometric forms. Their movements have their roots in classical ballet, but in addition each individual adds an individual note to their dance, sometimes it is more of an overflowing hip-hop, sometimes more of a classical modern dance. This has something of very formal, austere and yet incredibly beautiful.

Sometimes it is perhaps already too beautiful, too harmonious. No merciless disturbance breaks through the soft flow of the arms and the accurately stretched legs, the swaying rhythm of the shoulders. Frequently the movements are synchronous, sometimes in opposite directions, rarely the dancers touch each other. But this is also very consistent and complements itself with the intoxicating music of Hauschka, which sometimes dominates the dance, to the enchanting dance tableau. In a dialogue of movement and music, Barton searches for a new togetherness, and so the almost meditative feeling of being here in the presence of a danced utopia actually arises. Rock orgasm almost erupts

On this dance evening, but also in the music area, the Summer Festival is connecting lines. The Canadian musician Peaches played the festival area at Kampnagel off excessively - and a few days later Peaches‘ longtime comrade-in-arms Chilly Gonzales enchanted the audience in the Elbphilharmonie. Or: bassist played several concerts within the New Infinity video program in the Planetarium. And he is a guest at the Elbphilharmonie with his second band . There, the post-rock sextet plays its latest instrumental record “House Music“. A title that sounds more ironic than it is meant: with double bass, drums, percussion, violin and brass, the Canadians create a sound stream reminiscent of House. “House Music“ consists of swelling and decaying harmonies, in which you always expect a rock orgasm to break out, and which then meander on and on, atmospheric, gentle, bulky. Art pop that, thanks to the friendly understatement of the ensemble bassist Parry and violinist , remains down-to-earth. The Bell Orchestre is accompanied by the Aarhus Symfonieorkester, which has previously presented, perhaps too much focused on effect at some points, a passionate interpretation of Stravinsky‘s “Firebird“. André de Ridder of the Berliner Kammerensemble Stargaze is on the desk with the Danes. And stargaze already played there a week ago, with the singer Soap&Skin. A festival of connecting lines, no doubt about it.

Original text in Hamburger Abendblatt (August 25, 2019): https://www.abendblatt.de/kultur-live/article226882189/Letzte-grosse-Weltpremiere- faehrt-noch-mal-grossen-Tanz-auf.html