Baktruppen
Do and Undo & Deli Commedia

Dance / Ballet

Dates
22.–23.9.2007

Details
Premiere:
22.09.2007
Wiederholung:
23.09.2007
Talk im Anschluss an die 2. Vorstellung

Location
The Theatre / Karmeliterplatz
Graz

Production specifics
Koproduktion Rui Horta o Espaco do Tempo, Centro Coreográfico de Montemor-o-Novo (Portugal) & Autonnalen

Unterstützt durch das Norwegian Art Council, das norwegische Außenministerium & die Foundation for Performing Artists

It was a rainy late autumn day in Norway’s Bergen and their average age was well over forty when Baktruppen began to investigate contemporary dance in search of new challenges. More than half a ton of human being was to be moved across the floor in creative ways – divided among seven people. In “Do & Undo”, the first part of the evening, middle-aged men and women, dressed in black and white, tie themselves in and out of knots, pulling and pushing each other through thick and thin, sometimes even with grace. Accompanied by Gustav Mahler’s “Adagietto”, endlessly stretched.

Now, though, the company that have been presenting astonishing twists in their work for twenty years, had discovered their dance ambitions ... and even learned to keep track of what their bodies were doing in their minds. And they ventured to tackle a modern dance classic: Merce Cunningham conceived “Deli Commedia” in the eighties as a slapstick comedy influenced by the commedia dell’arte and the comedies of silent cinema. For Baktruppen – twenty years later – the buffoonery of this equally conceptual choreography was the ideal entrance to better understanding modern dance. Cunningham was so

favourably impressed by this new interpretation by the Norwegians that he personally made a gift of the choreography to the group. steirischer herbst is opening the stage of The Theatre with a theatre company that combines aesthetic innovation and the subtlety of theatre science like no other with daring humour and great warmth.

Theatergruppe / Tanzkompanie: Baktruppen
Tänzerin / Tänzer: Oyvind Berg
Tänzerin / Tänzer: Ingvild Holm
Tänzerin / Tänzer: Jorgen Knudsen
Tänzerin / Tänzer: Per Henrik Svalastog
Tänzerin / Tänzer: Nina Tecklenburg
Tänzerin / Tänzer: Bo Krister Wallström
Tänzerin / Tänzer: Worm Winters

Retrospective
Retrospective
Retrospective