The Janáček Theatre is proud to present one of the highlights of this year’s edition of the TWB Festival: an outstanding achievement of contemporary German dance theatre. SYM-PHONIE MMXX, a piece for dance, light and orchestra by Sasha Waltz and Georg Friedrich Haas, one of the most acclaimed contemporary music composers, received its world premiere at Staatsoper Unter den Linden in Berlin in March 2022.
In her work Sasha Waltz fuses and crosses various genres, cooperating with a wide range of guest dancers and musicians who are often involved in the creative process. This is reflected in the very name of Waltz’s ensemble, Sasha Waltz & Guests. To date, more than 300 artists and ensembles from the fields of architecture, visual arts, choreography, film, design, literature, fashion and music from 30 countries have collaborated as »Guests« on over 80 productions, »Dialoge« projects and films. Sasha Waltz & Guests works in an international and national constantly evolving network of production and guest performance partners, showing its current repertoire of 12 active pieces in about 70 performances each year. Such cross-over collaborations are typical for Sasha Waltz, who is not only a choreographer, but also a stage director, a wide scope creator and an innovative researcher.
In her present choreographic work, Waltz is focusing on the intensification of collaborative processes, such as the synchronic development of choreography and music. This approach is fully applied in her latest performance SYM-PHONIE MMXX. Composed for the large symphonic ensemble of the Staatskapelle Berlin, the music by Georg Friedrich Haas gives room to a ‘symphony of dance and music’, which creates a close connection between the musical language and the dancers’ body language. The production’s concept, in the best tradition of dance history, is based on the inspiring encounter of the arts and has been declared the artistic guideline: music, dance and visual arts are transformed by Sasha Waltz and her team into a full-length work which reflects – as a seismograph – the contrasts and discrepancies of our reality nowadays. The year in the title refers to the year 2020 in which the play was originally scheduled to premiere on the stage of Staatsoper Unter den Linden. But because of the Covid safety measures, it had to wait two more years to celebrate its premiere in a yet more fatal social-political context.

‘In SYM-PHONIE MMXX I want to shape an extreme experience of our reality, creating a contemporary genre painting.’

Sasha Waltz

Sasha Waltz (b. 1963) is a choreographer, dancer and stage director After her first studies at the School of New Dance Development in Amsterdam she joined the postmodern oriented New York City dance scene that worked in interdisciplinary exchange with the other arts. In 1986 and 1987 she danced in the New York based companies of Pooh Kaye, Yoshiko Chumo & School of Hard Knocks and Lisa Kraus & Dancers. In 1993, she co-founded her own company, Sasha Waltz & Guests, with Jochen Sandig in Berlin. In 1996, she opened the critically acclaimed Sophiensaele, a theatre she co-founded with Sandig. In 2000, Waltz was named an Artistic Director of Berlin’s Schaubühne am Lehniner Platz where she created such pieces as Körper, S and nobody as well as the choreographic installation insideout. In the following years, she was exploring the possibilities of applying contemporary dance language and strategies to both historical and new operas and ballets. Her efforts resulted in a new genre of ‘choreographic opera’. Recently, Waltz has been increasingly committed to sharing and transmitting her expertise as a dancer, promoting dance as a means of social and social-political communication. Since 2013, she has been a member of the Berlin Arts Academy. In 2011, she was honoured with the Bundesverdienstkreuz of the Federal Republic of Germany. In 2016, Waltz founded the interdisciplinary and open exchange platform ZUHÖREN, opening up a ‘third dimension’ for arts and politics. Two years ago, Sasha Waltz was awarded the French title of Commandeur de l’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres.

”… This is no perfumed fairytale from supposedly better times but the harsh present day, fashioned with skill and dedication by an international dance troupe.”

Online-Merker, March 14, 2022