As in an impressionistic double portrait, this scenic-theatrical dance performance shows an interpersonal encounter between two characters, which are reflected in a composition of images and memories.
A playful search for the identity of the other – without words, instead accompanied by Maurice Ravel’s Pavane pour une infante defunté.
Möllmer and Tien get along in their detailed duo without traditional dance techniques. By focusing on the very small everyday gestures (lighting a cigarette, putting on a coat) and focusing on their interpersonal meaning and performing them as in slow motion or in a kind of still moving, the two dancers create an almost reverent, slightly surreal atmosphere in which the essence of the small and seemingly unimportant things of life becomes palpable. For a moment, time seems to stand still, to run backwards or slower … an optical illusion?
Jan Möllmer already gained his first experience in the field of dance as a teenager in the famous Pina Bausch production “Kontakthof”. Both, Jan Möllmer and Tsai-Wei Tien, began their dancer career with a degree at the Folkwang Hochschule Essen. We are pleased to be able to present a small piece of dance theater of the new generation to our dance weekend with “The Man”, to which one can still look at the influence of the Bausch-influenced Folkwang style.