CoisCéim dance company's latest project, Threads, shows the links between German and Irish dance and also points the way to a European future, writes Michael Seaver
Even contemporary dance has national stereotypes. The French are stylish and suave but ultimately shallow; the Americans infatuated with visceral steps but wary of anything conceptual; the Finns quirky but cold and obsessed with lighting. And the Germans?
"German choreographers try to be very precise and use movement that speaks directly to the audience rather than be decorative," says choreographer and critic Norbert Servos. He is one of the contributors to Threads, a season of dance performances, talks, films and workshops threading the influence of German Expressionist Dance on European dance. And although national styles - and stereotypes - have been diluted by changing social and artistic mores, German dance is unique in having a dense family tree where influences can be traced from one generation to the next.
The project, by Irish dance company CoisCéim, developed out of artistic director David Bolger's visit to Freiberg to complete a commission for Irina Pauls's dance company, which is resident in the municipal theatre.
"To be honest, I didn't know a lot about German dance before heading over, but I was aware of some traces of Irish influence," says Bolger. "[Irish dancer] Rionach Ni Neill is working at Tanz Bremen, Marguerite Donlon in Saarbrücken, and [Arts Council dance specialist] Finola Cronin spent years at Pina Bausch's company. After completing the commission I really wanted to reset it with dancers from CoisCéim and maybe some from Freiberg, but also introduce Irina Pauls's work to Irish audiences."
The original plan for a double-bill of Bolger's Out of Harm's Way and Pauls's Hanging on by a Thread would have been too demanding on the dancers, so it made sense to separate the works into different evenings. In the meantime, Bolger was keen to fill in the gaps in his knowledge of German dance and so researched and spoke to writer Deirdre Mulrooney, who has written both on the highly influential German choreographer, Pina Bausch, and on the history of Irish modern dance. Discovering links, both physical and ideological, between Irish and German dance, he eventually succumbed to the temptation to share this newfound knowledge and so the performances acquired ancillary talks, films and workshops.
GERMAN DANCE IS not completely new to Irish audiences: Thomas Lehmen and Raimund Hoghe's work has appeared in Dublin and there were performances of Kurt Jooss's renowned anti-war dance, The Green Table, in the Gaiety Theatre in 1953. The Green Table epitomises tanztheater, a movement that emerged in the 1910s and 1920s and incorporated dance, speech, song, sets and props in one amalgam. Unlike ballet at the time, it was strongly based in reality and, through practitioners such as Mary Wigman, Rudolf von Laban and Jooss himself, sought to unite the art forms and, by extension, humankind. But tanztheater is still very much part of contemporary German dance, a point made by Norbert Servos in his public talk earlier this week.
"There are a few choreographers who are working within this heritage", Servos told The Irish Times. "Susanne Linke's work, for example, still refers to what she learned from Mary Wigman. But there is also a kind of hidden heritage. Pina Bausch studied at the Wigman School with Kurt Jooss and still has a connection, even if she is choreographing in a completely different way. The most important things she learned from Jooss were being absolutely honest in what you are doing and that every movement you are using on stage is a motivated movement. This is the essence of German Expressionist dance."
But how long can German dance hang on to this sense of cultural purity? Servos acknowledges that there is a huge range of personal styles, but still points to stylistic elements of tanztheater evident in contemporary work, such as genre- blending and a rootedness in reality. Irina Pauls points out that, although forms are blurring and the range of influences are increasing - from installations to hip-hop - there has been no reaction against tanztheater by new generations who have hung on to its principles.
"Every choreographer wants to be as honest as they can with their movement and don't want to fake anything," she says.
But as forms amalgamate, German and fellow European artists are less influenced by stylistic groupings. Manifesto for an European Performance Policy was published in 1999 by a collective of performance artists, including Jérôme Bel and Xavier le Roy, and states: "We are aware of shared anxiety over the loss of 'cultural identities' in the European context today but have no fear of the 'homogenisation of cultures'. Operating on a trans-national level, our artistic practices dismantle such concepts or logics."
This trans-national fertilisation has enriched European practice to a level where it has now surpassed New York as the capital for dance practice. A New York Times article in 2004 pointed out that "the European dance community stretches beyond culture and country and is made possible by curators and producers who may not always make the right choices but who aren't afraid to try something new". Servos recalls imaginative stagnation when he worked in New York and maintains that Americans have been slow to recognise the shift which he reckons has taken place over the past 20 years.
THERE ISN'T A new dance capital, and the creative landscapes in Oslo and Bucharest are just as vital as those brewing in London, Vienna, Paris or Lisbon. This fact makes artistic exchanges such as Threads all the more important. Next Wednesday, as part of the event, Arnd Wesemann, editor of Ballet-Tanz magazine, will give a politically charged talk on the choreographic strategies which he maintains make German dance-makers "the last avant-garde". Talks about German work practices will also be given by choreographer Toula Limnaios (December 4th) and by Ursula Teich (December 7th), artistic manager for the young choreographer, Antje Pfundtner. Germany's large state subsidies and its network of municipal theatres are the envy of other Europeans, and they mean that choreographers acquire the political acumen to develop their artistic strategies.
"But we keep it separate from the studio," says Pauls. "It's not a reason to make work. I don't need the political fights and disappointments in my dancers' bodies."
Instead, her work responds to broader issues in society. She believes that the nature of dance allows choreographers to react to change more quickly than playwrights or composers.
"The pieces we are doing are closest to society because we can get an idea from head to stage in, say, three months," she says. "A play can take over a year to be written, rehearsed and produced."
In Hanging on by a Thread, Pauls has taken the Greek myth of Ariadne, a frequent inspiration for artists. "She is both a mythical figure and a modern woman," she says. "And life is a big labyrinth. It has its opposites, like brightness and darkness, happiness and sadness."
Three nights of film screenings will range from The Green Table and Pina Bausch's masterpiece, Café Müller, to Rhythm Is It, a version of The Rite of Spring by youth dance specialist Royston Maldoom with 250 Berlin schoolchildren. While the latter might have a tenuous connection with German Expressionist dance, it reflects the principles of Rudolf von Laban, whose democratising approach to education and belief that all movement was dance has made him the lodestar for community dance here in Ireland.
Although Threads seeks to introduce Irish audiences to German dance, it will also help us understand the position of Irish dance within the increasingly important European context.
• For details of the Threads programme, go to www.coisceim.com