In 2021, the dance company Sasha Waltz & Guests began a new artistic process from which new formats are constantly emerging. The musical basis is Terry Riley's »In C« (1964), an open composition that was revolutionary at the time and is generally regarded as the first work of minimal music. Based on this milestone in music history, Sasha Waltz and her dancers developed choreographic material that follows a similarly variable structure and is deliberately not designed as a finished stage piece: »In C« consists of a system of 53 choreographic figures for a structured improvisation with clear rules and laws. Within this set of rules, the individual performer is given creative freedom, which must always be related to the group - very similar to

our democratic society, in which the limits of personal freedom are where the group is not violated. The roles of leadership and followers are not fixed, each performer can switch roles at any time. »In C« is a piece about being part of a group as an individual, not an individual within the group. This makes »In C« a very democratic piece and each performance is always new and different.

»In C« premiered on March 6, 2021 in a digital live stream from the Radialsystem in Berlin, has toured internationally since then and was passed on to a constantly growing dance community at the same time. »In C« opens up new possibilities of flexible artistic production and artistic exchange across national borders: The choreographic figures were recorded in explanatory video tutorials, which enable the choreographic material to be learned digitally and thus independent of location. A version of the choreographic figures for amateurs and young dancers has also been created and is accessible through us.

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»In C« is a dynamic, modular system that remains adaptable. It is an exciting a challenge to be able to develop many different variations and formats from this, both for professional dancers as well as for children and amateurs.«

Sasha Waltz

13–15 December 2019

Radialsystem, Berlin

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After three editions of the community events circling around the active and physical listening in 2016 and 2017 Sasha Waltz & Guests in December 2019 embarked on a new adventure. Within the complexity of climate change and climate justice the company wanted to share its collective techniques of working: Inviting people to join forces with local civic initiatives, the network of the dance company and some international guests – embodying diverse perspectives and working together towards action. The program of »Zuhören #4« was comprised of workshops, conversations and interventions that involved head, heart, and feet and mixed dance and music and commonly shared food. It was a weekend of learning, connecting and enjoyment!

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A film by Sasha Waltz & Guests

Camera and Editing: Christina Voigt

In September 2022, the city of Marl in North Rhine-Westphalia itself became a stage and protagonist. The German choreographer Sasha Waltz with »In C – Marler Partitur« developed a special project that aimed to

incorporate the town’s architecture and population. Over 100 non-professional dancers together with professional dancers from the region over months studied and rehearsed the choreographic figures of

»In C« in different groups, which they then presented on various sites in the city, taking the audience with them and slowly spiraling to the center of the city, where the procession ended in a performance with all participants and dancers of the company Sasha Waltz & Guests.

The project was initiated by a group of citizens of Marl, that for years have been committed to the preservation of Marl’s extraordinary architecture. Through the network of the New Patrons they became the New Patrons of Marl and were able to engage the choreographer Sasha Waltz to develop a project, that used the means of dance to bring to life the cultural heritage of the city of Marl.

The Gesellschaft der Neuen Auftraggeber (New Patrons) provides the logistical infrastructure and supports citizens, artists, and cooperation partners in commissioning, financing, and realizing projects and new works of

art. The fruits of these collaborative efforts are non-commercial, public, and non-profit cultural assets.

In this two-part evening, Sasha Waltz together with an ensemble of 13 dancers devotes herself to »Symphony no. 7 in A Major, op. 92« by Ludwig van Beethoven and contrasts this classical music with a commissioned work by contemporary composer Diego Noguera titled »Freiheit/Extasis«. Back in June 2021, Sasha Waltz devised a choreography to two movements from Beethoven’s Seventh Symphony at the ancient temple in Delphi as part of the European broadcaster ARTE’s production »Mit Beethoven durch Europa« (Through Europe with Beethoven). The music has captivated the choreographer ever since. It touches on topics of Beethoven’s time that are still relevant to us today: the failure of a revolution, a (forced) return to old traditions, a friction between the desire for societal transformation and restoration and the accompanying loss of freedom and future perspectives. In the first part of the evening, Sasha Waltz takes up these topics to the electronic sounds of Diego Noguera’s »Freiheit/Extasis« and reinterprets them from a contemporary point of view. How do personal freedom and societal constraints relate to each other?

The music of Sasha Waltz’ latest choreography for dance, light and orchestra »SYM-PHONIE MMXX« is a commissioned work by the renowned composer Georg Friedrich Haas and is his first official stage work for dance. The production’s concept, in the best tradition of dance history, is based on the inspiring encounter of the arts and has been declared the artistic guideline: music, dance and visual arts are transformed into a full-length work which at the same time reflects the contrasts and contradictions of our current life reality like a seismograph. Thus creating a piece of clamorous silence and eruptive energy.

»In C« by Sasha Waltz & Guests is a colorful excursion into the world of minimal music. Based on Terry Riley’s revolutionary and open composition by the same name from 1964, Sasha Waltz and her dancers developed choreographic material that follows a similarly variable structure and therefore always leaves room for new variations. »In C« is an experimental, constantly evolving process that once again reconceives and refines Sasha Waltz & Guests’ long-standing approach as well as the dialogue between dance, music and space, both digitally and in real life. At the same time, it explores the potential of flexible artistic production and of artistic exchange across national borders.

For »Kreatur«, Sasha Waltz with her 14 dancers examines the phenomena of existence against the background of a disrupted society: power and a lack of power, dominance and weakness, freedom and control, community

and isolation.

Sasha Waltz engages in »Continu« with primary impulses deriving from her major projects for museums of 2009

– the artistic inaugurations for David Chipperfield’s Neues Museum Berlin and Zaha Hadid’s MAXXI in Rome. In »Continu« a field of tension between choreographic, musical and visual currents of energy is generated: together with 24 dancers, Sasha Waltz has conceived a large-format, archaic choreography with the epochal symphonic work »Arcana« by Edgard Varèse at its musical core, complemented by compositions by Iannis Xenakis and Claude Vivier. Since the 2010 premiere of »Continu« in the frame of Zürcher Festspiele, the piece has been revised several times and in the summer of 2011 Sasha Waltz presented the final version in Salzburg, including the live percussion solo »Rebonds B« by Iannis Xenakis performed by Robyn Schulkowsky.

Pascal Dusapin’s 1991 composition »Medeamaterial« with texts by Heiner Müller is the basis for Sasha Waltz’ choreographic-musical examination of the Medea myth. At the centre are previous exegeses of materials, such as contemporary interpretations that contrast with the antique image which painted Medea as fury, revenger and child-murderer, amongst them Christa Wolf’s novel »Medea. Stimmen«. Sasha Waltz appraises the feminine power of the healer and the mother – thus the creative and destructive powers of the character in this work are situated in pronounced tension. The exploration of these mythic materials allows the choreographer to engage with all her artistic capabilities. The world of antiquity is made palpable by way of expansive group formations, the archaic vocabulary of images melds with that of the movement.

Henry Purcell’s »Dido & Aeneas« was a premiere for Sasha Waltz, marking the beginning of her work on »choreographic opera«. Together with 12 dancers and 51 musicians, choristers and soloists, she created her own interpretation of Purcell’s only complete opera, starting at the emotional and multi-faceted world of its protagonists. With »Dido & Aeneas«, Sasha Waltz successfully combines dance, music and song in a completely new way, taking the choreography far beyond the mere illustration of the opera’s story. Singers and choristers become part of an overall choreography, which sets them loose from their original roles and functions, making it no longer visibly clear who is a singer, dancer, soloist or choir member.

With this choreography Sasha Waltz for the first time develops a dance piece based on the structure of a classical music composition. The music by Franz Schubert is performed live on stage. In a subtle way dance and music in this performance create emotional states between weightless floating and being off balance: Dance at its most riveting, at once unmasking, manipulating, and ultimately exalting in the innumerable aspects that make us human. »Impromptus« became the starting point of Sasha Waltz’ extensive work phase creating to classical music.

2000, the production »Körper« marked not only the beginning of the then new direction of the Schaubühne, but also of the renowned »Körper«-Trilogy by Sasha Waltz. Through a sober recognition of the body’s materiality, the choreography interrogates cultural templates for movement, brutal forms of pleasure, enhanced performance and cosmetic improvement: the body regarded as a resource. Naked to the skeleton, the piece submits the body to a radical undressing: the removal of the names which afflict and conceal it at every turn. Twisting and turning the body, taking it down wrong paths, over and over again this choreography begins the work of a genuine making-visible. The body appears as something never before seen.

In 1996, »Allee der Kosmonauten« was the first premiere at the newly founded Sophiensæle in Berlin Mitte. Created at the cusp of a new epoch, the piece recounts an era of living together without an escape route. In a housing block in former East Berlin, feelings and movements of a three generation family build up dangerously around their living room couch. The uncomfortably comical exploration of this anxious space, crowded and colliding, triggers solutions at the limits of danceability.

On the occasion of »Dialoge 2021 - Ludwigsburg«, Sasha Waltz talks about the creation and concept of her »Dialoge« projects, explains the new aspects that the Ludwigsburg Residenzschloss opens up and also reflects on the similarities between baroque sounds and minimal music.

She knows what she wants: dance theater that gets under your skin. Sasha Waltz has been reinventing the genre over and over again for 25 years and is celebrated worldwide with her company. Step more calmly? No way. An encounter.

Sasha Waltz dances through the Elbphilharmonie. The dancers in her choreography at the Elbphilharmonie come from all angles. The rhythm of the dancers makes the music while the orchestra remains silent.

Interview with choreographer and dancer Sasha Waltz on the occasion of the performance »Rebonds« by Sasha Waltz & Guests within the framework of the exhibition »Edgar Degas – The Late Work« at Fondation Beyeler.