Magan's World

MANCHÁN MAGAN'stales of a travel addict

I visited Saarbrücken last weekend. While that mightn’t sound like the most pioneering statement in the history of travel journalism, it is, in fact, the first time the city has ever been mentioned in the travel pages of The Irish Times, or The New York Times, or The Guardian.

You’ll understand why if you visit. It is not the most prepossessing of places, but it does possess two remarkable treats. One is the steel-and-glass block built on to the grand Saarbrücken castle in the 1980s: an entrancing black diamond of dark steel, corrugated like the Giants Causeway, soaring upwards like an Escher drawing. Upon approaching it, massive metal doors clank open automatically, sucking you inside, and then fold closed again with a shuddering finality that echoes through the Baroque stone walls.

Saarbrücken’s second great treat consists of the dance-theatre productions of Saarlandisches Staatstheater. Casa Azul was playing when I visited – an electrifying, skin-tingling performance that re-establishes the parameters of what contemporary dance and music can do if treated with skill. A German architect, Gottfried Böhm, is responsible for the metal addition to the castle, but to my great surprise a Longford woman is behind Saarbrücken’s dance-theatre. Marguerite Donlon has been artistic director and principal choreographer of Saarlandisches Staatstheater for a decade, building an international reputation in this out-of-way spot. Die Welt proclaimed her Romeo and Juliet “the best production in decades.”

Ballettanz awarded it “Most important production of 2007.” Donlon has been awarded an Order of Merit for services to Germany and her seminal production of The Rite of Spring is regarded as the finest of this century.

Saarbrücken, the regional capital of the Saarland, is the smallest and least populated state in Germany, tucked away near the French and Luxembourgian borders. It has little to prove to the outside world, and it appears that its distance from the knee-jerk, fad-chasing, fashionable mainstream may have facilitated the freedom to experiment that is evident in both Casa Azul and Böhm’s building. Both are confident statements of modern self-identity that shun elitism or academic aloofness and prove how austere art forms can have immediate impact on a general public. For Marguerite Donlon, being artistic director in Saarbrücken may not have the cachet of being in Paris or Berlin, but it has given her the freedom to reimagine dance-theatre and contemporary ballet beyond the crushing conformity of the Pale. The state of Saarland funds her company of 18 dancers from 13 different countries and two ballet masters.

It offers her the full support of the Staatstheater which comprises 423 people working in costume, design, lighting, dramaturgy and audience development, with an annual subsidy of €29 million.

A trip to Saarbrücken is unlikely to provoke water-cooler envy upon one’s return, but it has made me resolve to tend more towards liminal destinations for short breaks. The shops may be somewhat dowdier and the food stodgier, but Saarbrücken sparked my imagination in a way than many of the fashionable cities that appear with such predictability in travel supplements rarely do.