Impressions EXPOSURE

OVERWHELMED WORLD

Urban Arts Ensemble performs in Wuppertal at the Altes Schauspielhaus

by Klaus Dilger

The Urban Arts Ensemble Ruhr, together with the Compagnie Danza Contemporánea de Cuba, focus on overwhelming in the choreography by Julio César Iglesias Ungo and Hans van den Broeck. Ben Frost’s composition and live music provide the backdrop in a stage space that needs nothing but a plastic lawn carpet, fog, light and video effects to catapult the audience into a world that only pretends to be nature in terms of colour.

This sits in a circle around the green square as if they had been invited to a pick-nick, the host of which appears to be a robot (nastily friendly and as charismatic as a machine, played by ROBOZEE, alias Christian Zacharas). Hardly any less ‘seemingly alive’, the thirteen other protagonists gradually gather around him in heavy, stomping, stamping steps. Beat by beat and bit by bit they free themselves from the choreographed monotony, which takes a long time to dissolve for the first time like an explosion in breakneck solos, which simultaneously but never synchronously want to melt the lawn plastic.

Then silence – like after an atomic bomb detonation.

As if in an open-air cinema, the dancers lie lined up on the green and gaze into the waves of light that wash over them like radioactive rays. Images of the French artist and illustrator Julian Pacaud come to mind.

Such dense moments and dramaturgically skilful caesuras do not always succeed, sometimes EXPOSURE lacks timing and choreographic finesse and the dance vocabulary does not seem unlimited. Then the bodies, together with Ben Frost’s composition, speak at a volume that is simply overwhelming.

Perhaps even an intentional effect as a mirror of our world at this very time?

But even in the face of this apparent overpowering, the colourful mix of dancers are not powerless. They are all equipped with their very own skills and characteristics, which per se run counter to any form of norm or group. This gives us hope, especially when they all maintain and conquer the space to which Ben Frost made a significant contribution with his sounds and lighting effects to the staging of the choreographies by Julio César Iglesias Ungo and Hans van den Broeck. There is even individual beauty to be found in this fading diversity, which only shines all the brighter when these individuals meet in danced rituals and become a community.