In his new solo, Thomas Hauert intends to deepen a creative process already present in his last two creations: making psychology, inner life, emotions and the unconscious a driving force behind movement. The starting point for Troglodyte is a kind of complex psychological enigma, expressed in the working title and subtitle of the solo “Zaungast/Zaunkönig”, focusing on the experience of the position of the outsider, the one who is not part of the group, the one who looks on from the outside. Zaungast is a German word that describes someone who attends an event to which they were not invited, behind the fence (literally: “guest of the fence”). It’s associated with Zaunkönig, the German name for wren, a small songbird (literally: “the king of the fence”), which we imagine sitting on the fence. Tiny but kingly at the same time. Someone who straddles the fence, who doesn’t take a stand, who doesn’t make up his mind, and who doesn’t commit himself in consequence.

The word troglodyte originally refers to a living creature that inhabits a cave or dwelling dug into the ground, like the little bird Zaunkönig/troglodyte. The term Troglodyte also sounds like an insult, one associated with the “Cave Man”, the boorish, uneducated, coarse man.

Thomas Hauert will share his sensitive world with the audience, drawing certain parallels with the Platonic myth of the cave, as well as with Dostoyevsky’s Notes from Undergound, presenting two fragments of the memoirs of a reclusive man cut off from a world from which he finds himself alienated. Just as Dostoyevsky’s short story is written in two distinct segments, the structure of Troglodyte will be divided into two parts, the first of which takes the form of a monologue, a diary in which we hear the account of a reclusive man who shares his acute awareness of the world and mankind. The second part features a guest dancer at each venue, who enters into a dialogue with the artistic material unveiled in the first part. In each new venue, a new encounter, a new interpretation, a new point of view, a new key to reading will be proposed thanks to the duo’s new interactions.