Jetzt (2000) is a study on movement between falling and landing, the creative potential of the body in a state of instability. Thelonious Monk\'s stumbling rhythms and surprising harmonic sequences forms the appropriate musical counterpart.
A 33-year-old German-speaking Swiss living in Brussels, Thomas Hauert studied at the Rotterdam Dance Academy before working with Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker, and later with Pierre Droulers. He founded his own company in 1998 and, today, presents his third personal piece. The choreographer is deeply compassionate, a very good listener, while his reserve denotes great respect for others. All those qualities clearly show through in his choreographic work. Faithful and concerned with continuity he works with the same dancers as in his previous pieces: Sara Ludi, Samantha van Wissen, Mat Voorter and Mark Lorimer. An extraordinary togetherness cements this group, its members\' closeness and obvious pleasure in each other\'s company are marvellously infectious.
Hauert\'s pieces associate highly structured material with improvised movements. He explains: "Improvisation is not just a tool used during rehearsal. It is also integrated into the performance. I am convinced that the body can discover through improvisation extremely intricate patterns of movement it could never imagine before, on its own. We have to be daring enough to carry the improvisation much further, without restricting ourselves to the normal movements the body is familiar with."
This concept is superbly illustrated in \'Jetzt\', Hauert\'s most recent creation which was premiered last January at Luzerntanz, where Hauert was choreographer in residence. In this piece the dance composition is both extremely strict and unpredictable.
Between shape and desintegration \'Jetzt\' means \'now\'. No other title could make a clearer reference to the present. And Thomas Hauert draws extensively from it. While the dancers observe established laws they also seem to give in to instant mood swings � they\'re carried away by their breath, by an impulse they seem unable to control and that is a response to Thelonious Monk\'s jazz music. This is extraordinarily lively music, rarely used in dance performances. In "Jetzt" the relationship between movement and music is thus highly harmonious, strongly suggestive. Monk\'s music is neither narrative nor illustrative: it follows its own course, underpinning the dance � and the choreographer doesn\'t fail to pay tribute to it.
The dancers stagger, twirl, traverse the theatre, fall and get up again, waver between centrifugal force and gravitation. Because Thomas Hauert and his company don\'t satisfy themselves with exploring the corporeal mechanism of articulation and muscle, they also play with the weight of given parts of human anatomy, in search of a way to briefly escape gravitation. The projected images and films also participate in this search � images vacillating in the background or on a white linen screen, at times cut out, at others altered. The body becomes the mobile tool of the union of art and nature, artifice and artlessness. The postures conjure up a limited or unlimited space, depending on the moment.
Irony of the ineluctable No step looks like another. That\'s the magic of \'Jetzt\'. The way the dancers sway next to each other, cross the space or gather like the components of a mechanism sometimes resemble a dispassionate movement study. But � barely perceptibly � a marvellous kind of humour and irony emerges. The dancers\' articulations limber up, their muscles react faster, their blood heats up, and audacity makes its appearance. On Monk\'s music the dance becomes a relaxed walk, a whimsical play with speed. The dancers cling to each other like fractious children, their bodies trip over themselves. It is all brilliantly ordered � and stunningly danced.
Concept & direction: Thomas Hauert Created & dansed by: Mark Lorimer, Sara Ludi, Mat Voorter, Samantha van Wissen, Thomas Hauert Set design: Simon Siegmann Light design: Guy Peeters Video: Girls in the garden Costumes: Carine Lauwers Music: Thelonious Monk
Production: ZOO vzw
With the support of the "ministerie van de Vlaamse Gemeenschap, administratie Cultuur, afdeling Muziek, Letteren, Podiumkunsten" and of the "Vlaamse Gemeenschapscommissie" Coproduction: Luzerntanz (Switzerland), Brussels 2000 (Belgium)
Published by Süddeutsche Zeitung - Katja Schneider on 2001-07-15
Everything is crystal-clear. A study of falling, crashing and staggering: Thomas Hauert's production 'Jetzt'
In this study of falling, crashing, staggering and toppling over, Thomas Hauert and his company (two women and three men) present us with very beautiful movements. They all describe circles, spirals and ever-changing constellations on the stage encircled by legs.
They meet for improvised duets in which each of the characters falls according to his or her personality. One of them totters, another yields resignedly to his weight, a third one staggers as if tipsy. The accompaniment, jazzy piano music by Thelonious Monk, performed as if in passing, gives it all a feathery lightness. The atmosphere is merry, jaunty despite all the concentrated weight. A video projection on the back wall and on white surfaces dragged onto the stage shows dancers, as immovable as rocks, amidst the stream of passersby. At the end we do not only see the dancers, but also vacillating shapes created by their trajectories in space.