From Berlin With Love: Gods and Dogs

Performance Images: Staatsballett Berlin, photos by Yan Revazov, Serghei Gherciu

Dear Reader,

It’s getting dark in Berlin – the perfect moment for the annual Festival of Lights to illuminate landmarks across the city. The festival always catches me by surprise; it means that autumn is definitely here. Walking across Bebelplatz towards the Staatsoper Unter den Linden, I gazed at light art transforming the square’s predominantly beige eighteenth-century façades into a moving kaleidoscope of colour.  According to the festival programme, this year’s themes are unity, community and connection - fuzzy buzz words, but rushing across the square, I got distracted by my own vision of mulled wine and Christmas treats that would soon be on sale at the annual Christmas market held in the same location.

That night’s performance by the Staatsballett Berlin, on the other hand, was definitely exploring community and connection – and much more. The curtain opened unto a dark, gloomy stage. As dancers in simple, off-white trousers and tops were grasping for human connections in intricate duos and larger ensembles, I got pulled into a performance chiselling away at the complexities of live. There were deep bonds between dancers, but also loneliness, beauty and despair. At the back of the stage, a curtain of thin, light-reflecting chains created the illusion of long rays of light or water swinging left and right in never-ending motion.

There was something eery about the combination of Ludwig van Beethoven’s string quartet op. 18 with an electronic score by Dirk Haubrich including explosions that evoked in me images of war. Created in 2008, Gods and Dogs was Czech choreographer Jirí Kylián’s one-hundredth work for Nederlands Dans Theatre, a company he shaped as its long-standing director, but the piece felt like it was created now, born out of the discomfort of a world that has lost its balance.

Sitting down again after the intermission, I overheard a group of people discuss the likelihood of a Russian attack on NATO territory, and whether they would be willing to see their taxes go into bolstering European defence. I couldn’t help wondering how they responded to Canadian choreographer’s piece Angels’ Atlas, created in 2020 for the National Ballet of Canada. This piece touched me even more than Kylián’s Gods and Dogs. The choreography unfolded before an otherworldly light installation of chaotically moving, cloudy matter. Crystal Pite came to the title Angels’ Atlas because she was imagining that “if there were angels, and if they had a map of their world, it might look something like our backdrop. That is how I came to the title Angels’ Atlas, that sense of wanting to map something that can’t be mapped.” As the piece unfolded, a large ensemble in flowing black trousers projected yearning, vulnerability, and each individual’s constant shifting between loneliness and community. The dancers seemed to be moving towards something incomprehensible, mysterious and grand as liturgical music wafted in and out of an electronic score, shrinking the passage of time and connecting us with generations passed and yet to come.

Walking out of the theatre into the illuminated Berlin night, I felt humbled and elated, hoping that humanity might somehow find a way back to harmony in these uncertain times.

With love from Berlin