schrit_tmacher festival 2025

DANCE ROCK CONCERT

420People presents: The Watcher in the „Fabrik Stahl Bau Strang“ in Aachen

by Thomas Linden

Are we being monitored? It goes without saying that we find ourselves in a web of observation, control and surveillance. Every little digital reaction leaves traces and there are more and more of them. Life outside of digital surveillance no longer seems possible. That sounds oppressive, but we accept this situation; on the contrary, resistance to restrictions on digital communication is always prompt and fierce. The fact that we have sold our souls by entering the world of digitality is perhaps open to debate, but it is undeniable that we have given up our physicality at the cloakroom. This is the point of departure for the Czech dance company 420People, whose production ‘The Watcher’ at the Stahlbau Strang factory in Aachen had the audience on the edge of their seats.

420PEOPLE_The-Watcher©TANZweb.org_Klaus-Dilger

Not really a new aspect of the media discourse. Right at the beginning and in the final image, the Prager-Kompagnie presents a shadow play in which the black patterns of the machines cast their shadows over the human bodies. Dance is the medium through which the body reminds us of its presence and rights. This is done here with an acoustic and dancing vigour that soon makes the theme fade into oblivion as the production progresses. The senses triumph so unreservedly that no one needs to dwell on intellectual conflicts. Choreographer Václav Kuneš, who trained at the Nederlands Dans Theater, also installs a powerful player on stage in the form of the indie rock band Please The Trees. The synchronisation between the actions of the five-member ensemble (Francesca Amy Amante, Eliska Jirsova, Simona Machovicova, Veronika Tököly and Filip Stanek) and the three musicians works with precise timing. Dancing moments are given added vigour when the percussion dictates the beats. At times, however, the musicians crashed over the dance actions with an acoustic effort that threatened to drown out the sound of the action on stage in the by no means soundproofed industrial hall.

Yet the scenes there were certainly powerful. Kuneš favours the frontal attack. His dancers always act in full view of their audience. Even when they communicate with each other or when a pas de deux is rarely interspersed, every movement relates to the stage ramp. This creates a certain static quality, which they try to counter with all the faster turns and, above all, excessive exertion. The Praguers see contemporary dance as a conglomerate of modern dance and martial arts. People run and jump, there are sweeping turns, cartwheels are performed and headstands are just as much a part of the programme as rolling on the floor. Female empowerment is expressed through borrowings from kickboxing, gymnastics and martial arts. However, this feminist expressiveness seems aesthetically timid in comparison – certainly unfairly – to Florentina Holzinger’s Ophelia spectacle, which showed similar sequences four days earlier in Cologne, albeit with an unexpectedly greater radicalism.

The verve with which the dancers of 420People enter into their flow of movement is impressive. Václav Kuneš does not speculate with subtle nuances, as his choreography is not designed to tell a story. He recognises the strengths of his ensemble in the speed and emphasis with which the young dancers accompany each gesture. It is more encounters than narratives that arise between the solos that each of them receives over the course of the evening. The Czech dancers succeed in acknowledging the sensual presence of the body, its expressive power and the vital will that emanates from it. Although they want to prove something to us that has not remained hidden, the human body is the most fascinating medium of communication there is. Precisely because it does not possess streamlined perfection, but can inspire in its presence. In any case, the Czechs were able to completely convince the audience in Aachen of this.