Earlier, when there was no TV, people sat together at night and told each other stories. Eerie figures populated these stories and made the audience shudder. Such a story is the Swiss legend of the Graatzug. Fascinated by this legend, Nina Stadler and Annalena Fröhlich developed the idea for a dance film, which they realized together with the filmmaker Jan Mühlethal as a horribly beautiful work of art. Film and stage are now becoming a new whole: “Graatzug – the stage play for the film” is the first stage play of the young Bernese artist collective deRothfils.
According to legend, sinister creatures, surrounded by icy coldness, pass night after night – the spirits of the grazer. Wherever these beings emerge, they leave behind fear and fascination. It is said that the souls of the dead must join in this procession of the damned to atone for their guilt on the arduous way up into the glacial ice. Against the backdrop of a lavish feast on the Tanner family estate, the Swiss artist collective is staging a choreography that lets one look deeply into human abysses. In the course of the evening, the members of the family are haunted by the ghosts until finally everything slowly collapses and the border between this world and the afterlife disappears more and more.
An extraordinary combination of dance and theater that captivates the viewer.