Sasha Waltz and the “In C” obsession

There are over 60 years of difference between Terry Riley’s “In C” (for us “In C”) and the dance performance of the same title that the choreographer Sasha Waltz created using precisely that music and which was staged at the Teatro Valleys of Reggio Emilia. So a comparison with a seminal piece, hard and pure, of American minimalism of which Riley was a champion together with Philip Glass and Steve Reich. An imperturbable and unstoppable composition: to a repeated first note of a keyboard, other instruments are added, all committed to reaffirming the tone. A trend that can become obsessive and that proceeds by imperceptible expansions, shifts of accents. All not insensitive to the oriental charm of Indian ragas or Balinese gamelan

A period minimalism, with a Zen taste (performed live by the Casella ensemble), which is superimposed on a choreographic interpretation of today. Musical archeology and contemporaneity of dance. For his ten dancers (seven girls and three boys) Waltz chooses costumes in pastel colors (pink, blue, green, yellow) and organizes a dance of well-constructed articulated sequences against a background illuminated by the same colours. Everything is born, however, and as has often happened in recent years, during the pandemic and the Lockdown. A dialogue between dancers and music that took place remotely using both digital and real life. The dancers coped with their task on the basis of video tutorials. Then it was time to assemble. But the world premiere on March 6, 2021 took place in streaming at the Radialsystem in Berlin.

A method that could suggest a choreographic fragmentation is instead resolved in a dance that flows changeable and imperturbable where the steps are distributed among the ten dancers engaged in simple walks with the torso stretched backwards, or in jumps and pirouettes, sometimes individually, others as a group. Or still softly lying on the ground.

The result is a show of formal elegance that slips away in just over an hour without apparent jolts or continuously imperceptibly changing.

The artistic path that led Waltz to “In C” is interesting. Born in Karlsruhe, the pieces that launched her on the world dance scene were dance theater pieces such as the “Travelogue” trilogy and then “Koerper”, “S” and “Nobody”. Qjui instead gives us a piece of pure dance, all focused on the pleasure of movement. Often a guest of quality Italian festivals, we have seen her at Romaeuropa and at Torinodanza. You have recently tested yourself with Beethoven’s Seventh Symphony. As director and choreographer you have tackled Wagner’s Tannhauser, for example.