Choreography: Johann Kresnik | Clip length: 0’51 min
Germany, in the second half of the 1960s: the father abuses his wife and children, the grandfather quotes the Bild newspaper and likes to saw up baby dolls, the grandmother suffers from a cleaning compulsion and tells of her escape from the Russians to the West. The son, born in 1950, also has to watch as new Wirtschaftswunderland houses are literally built from the excavated mass grave. He ends his young life with a jackhammer, the loud symbol of construction but also destruction. His funeral ends this “family dialogue” as a family photo; it began as a still from his parents’ silver wedding anniversary. Jackhammers thunder in music by Gustav Mahler, marches and contemporary hits resound. Johann Kresnik staged this family prison story in 1980, which ranges from the First World War to the crimes of the Second World War to the saturating post-war Germany, as a garish, loud, politically taking sides dance theatre. (Klaus Kieser)
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People
Kresnik, Johann
Institutions
Bremen Dance Theatre
Topics
German Dance Theatre