Impressionen NOWHERE

Standing ovations at the Stahlbau Strang factory in Aachen

„Nowhere“ by Yin Yue and her YY Dance Company

Night review by Natalie Broschat

Rick Takvorian, artistic director of the schrit_tmacher festival, greets the audience in person, but this time you don’t see him. He has decided to remain hidden out of politeness and doesn’t want to turn his back on anyone. This is because the audience and guests of the dance piece „Nowhere“ by the Yin Yue Dance Company at the Stahlbau Strang factory are positioned on two sides of the stage.

Chinese dancer and choreographer Yin Yue, who lives and works in New York, is almost a regular at the schrit_tmacher Festival. Almost exactly eight years ago, at the 2016 edition, she presented her half-hour choreography „Through the Fracture of Light“ here. In 2018, she then performed the commissioned work „Too soon to tell“ at the Ludwig Forum Aachen. In 2019, she even opened the main programme of the festival in Aachen with „The Edge of 30 Degrees“, consisting of the 10-minute duet „The Time Followed“, which she created with her long-time dance partner and YYDC rehearsal director Grace Whitworth, and the two half-hour group choreographies „Stones and Kisses“ and „Citizen“. At its premiere in New York, „Citizen“ also played with the special room and seating arrangement known as „in a round“, which was common in ancient theatre.

nowhere_YYDC©TANZweb.org_Klaus Dilger.

In the Stahlbau Strang factory, two groups of audience members sit opposite each other and wait spellbound for the performance to begin. „Nowhere“ begins with the penetrating percussion of Alexandre Dai Castaing, who is positioned on stage and responsible for the music. The six dancers move onto the stage in the dark and position themselves under the imposing, circular light installation by Solomon Weisbard. Quietly and carefully, they begin to move. Sleek and elegant arm movements are combined with gymnastic and acrobatic forms. The dancers are wonderfully dressed for this expansive material in their wide, earth-coloured costumes by Christine Darch.

In „Nowhere“, the group explores relationships with one another, whether as a couple, a circle of friends or a family group. As friction and differences of opinion can arise, one is sometimes reminded of Chinese martial arts when, for example, the group immediately returns to a teetering position in large lunges with their upper bodies simultaneously bent far backwards. The almost eight dancers are driven by the drums and switch from synchronised group moments with cutting movements to gentle and intimate duets with circling arms, springy legs and dynamic lifts.

Yin Yue has developed her own movement language, which she calls FoCo technique and which is made up of traditional Chinese and contemporary movement material. She has created lots and lots of movement material for „Nowhere“. This makes it somewhat difficult to follow and not lose the thread, as the dance piece also eludes a temporal-spatial orientation due to the seating arrangement. It has some lengths, loops and some movement sequences are repeated one round too many in places. A few strokes would certainly have done the rhythm of the whole piece good. „Nowhere“ has incredibly strong climaxes, for example when the group and the dance continue to drive each other on, charging their energies and discharging them powerfully to the almost military-like drumming. „Nowhere“ also has natural endings, for example when the group has completed an episode and come to rest. But Yin Yue was interested in precisely those moments in which something superficially concluded can be continued, discussed and viewed from a new angle.