Famous German choreographer Sasha Waltz presented her dance-theater production “Zweiland” at el-Gomhurriya Theater on 3 and 4 May after a tour of the Middle East for a month and a half which included Beirut, Ramallah and Jerusalem. “Zweiland” is a surrealistic performance in which Waltz employs dance, acting, singing and music to portray her perception of the reunification of Germany, while asserting the unbridgeable gap between people and states. The curtain raises on two male bodies as they melt into one another. One head, two hands, two trunks and four legs give shape to a mythical androgen, self-sufficient and blissful until the creature is separated by a man in a suit. Then the stage lights up and the rest of the décor is revealed to the nonplussed viewers: a heap of rubble on the left side of the stage, and a dirty yellow wall. A graceful dancer dressed in a mini-skirt and percussive high heels enters the stage from the side of the wall and mechanically walks along it, her pony tail dragging a ten-meter-long taut wire behind her. Waltz explained during a discussion held at the Goethe Institut on Tuesday that she “challenged the dancers to be responsible for the music of the whole show" and that, except for one who is a professional singer and musician, all are amateurs, "which gives a fragile, human feeling.” The show is peppered with traditional German songs sung by the members of the troupe, though none of the troupe is German. The members represent different nationalities, being Malagasy, Japanese, Canadian, Australian, Italian and Portuguese, and sometimes they unite with a common language before disintegrating into foreign entities that explode with anger in their mother tongues. “The richness of the troupe's multicultural background, coupled with their individual experience, creates a fertile ground for creation and opens gates of liberty,” Waltz said of the troupe, which was formed in 1997. “My dream work is to be able to bring all the means art offers--be it visual, movement, sound and acting--to create something complete,” she added. Improvisation is also crucial to Waltz's process, who said she was constantly researching how to best express spontaneity. “I like the improvisation that results from physical contact and frictions between two bodies, or more, because with a subtle balance of weight, the contact makes the movement,” she said. During her talk, Waltz rose suddenly from her chair and invited Waleed Awany, her startled Egyptian counterpart, to do the same. The two then engaged in a spontaneous movement that resulted from the simple contact of their two bodies, in front of the surprised audience. On stage, the pile of planks is constantly used to construct and deconstruct a shaky kiosk, which performs a variety of functions throughout the performance. It can be either a border post, a stand at a fair and a German Democratic Republic (GDR) grocery store where people wait in line endlessly in the hope of buying any product. The border post is an element that particularly resonated with the audience of Ramallah and Jerusalem, said Waltz, who said this “element is a feature of their daily life.” When Waleed Awany asked Waltz about the significance of the wall, she replied that “walls are not always visible; they can also be in our heads. Physical walls are terrible, but the ones we mentally erect can do more damage.”
