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| Radial systems Margarita Zieda, Art Critic | |
| Systems which radiate from a single centre like rays are called radial systems. This concept has become an integral part of the Berlin culture space since 2006, when on late summery autumn days all roads led to Holzmarktstraße 33, the address of Radialsystem V – New Space for the Arts. This was a new space for the arts both in the literal as well as the figurative sense. The building on the bank of the river Spree used to be a pumping station. It had been reconstructed under the direction of architect Gerhard Spangenberg and transformed into a labyrinth of halls and studios, and now was opening its doors for dance and music. The architecture of the building itself, which combines a modern blend of concrete, glass and light with the warm strength of an industrial brick building dating back to 1881 and the river flowing next to it, has followed the basic idea of radial systems – the dialogue of interplay between the past and the present, between tradition and innovation, with architecture, dance and music all uniting into a single work. In 2009, Folkert Uhde, playwright for the Berlin Academy of Ancient Music and one of the managers of Radialsystem V, received an award as the “Culture Manager of the Year” in Germany. Uhde himself is a musician who became an organizer of musical events after his hands were crushed in an accident. As a child he had sung in a church choir, and he has a great love of baroque music. This means a craving for inner harmony, as this trait, according to Uhde, in essence characterizes people who work with baroque music and distinguishes them from followers of modern music. In any case, if lovers of baroque music attend a concert of contemporary music, where there is no trace of consonance or harmony throughout the whole evening, they can experience real pain. Hence the audiences for ancient and modern music basically tend to be different. At Radialsystem there is a place for both kinds of music. Despite the above, Uhde considers it not quite right to divide music into early and modern. Music is neither old nor new. Music is music. It either exists or it doesn’t exist. And the music at Radialsystem is very diverse. There are night-time concerts, a kind of classical Woodstock, where people listen to music lying on the floor or on yoga mats, being at one with themselves, and the live music, and where resplendent evening dress and showing off loses all meaning. There is also the festival of new music Ultraschall, by now traditionally held around the beginning of the year, where the authors and performers come from all over the globe and range from ninth-graders to artists in their eighties, whose unique understanding of music has affected several generations of listeners and writers. | |
 Radialsystem V | |
| The doors of Radialsystem are open to a person’s determination, for example, a commitment to perform all the pieces Johann Sebastian Bach ever composed for the keyboard. Thus Christian Rieger, harpsichordist and early music performance specialist, gave recitals at Radialsystem over a period of three years, until the last note was played after a musical adventure of 27 concerts lasting 40 hours. “Why all Bach? There isn’t a single bad or redundant note in his keyboard compositions. And given that today there is so much poor music around us, good works need to be played – precisely, note by note,” Rieger is convinced. The other manager of Radialsystem V is Jochen Sandig, whose name is inseparable from one of the leading dance artists of the present day, Sasha Waltz. Radialsystem is the home of her dance company ‘Sasha Waltz & Guests’, and a place where new large format dance works are created. It is not possible to show these at Radialsystem, but they can be seen at other venues, for example, the Paris Bastille Opera which can seat 2700, or the Théâtre des Champs-Élysées. Waltz’s work has also been performed in Rome at the National Museum of the XXI Century Arts, commonly known as MAXXI. At the inauguration ceremony, this repository of 21st century art and architecture, designed by architect Zaha Hadid, was opened by Sasha Waltz and her thirty-eight musicians and dancers. This piece was in fact the first work to be displayed at the museum, seen only at the time of the event, as a graphic and resonant drawing of live and dancing sculptures clad in black, drawn through the architecture of the flowing lines of concrete and white walls. Performing here, the dancers experienced attacks of dizziness, unable to find any point of stability to watch while executing turns. Zaha Hadid’s architectural talent to resolve the heaviest of constructions into a stunning lightness, with massive concrete supports crossing high up in the air like the lightly marked X of infinity, was mirrored in Waltz’s choreography. In one part of the space the dancers defeated gravity and lost contact with the ground as the only point of reference – suspended from cables, they were living, breathing, moving through air, walking in the sky, turning through all possible directions. Waltz’s confrontation with architecture in her perception started from her very birth. Born into a family of an architect and a curator, she grew up in a house designed by her father. The interior was being constantly remodelled and the artworks displayed there also were being incessantly changed around. Sasha Waltz considers architecture as the engine of her work – her performances develop from it. The first impulse for a new work is always derived from architecture, from the ambiance of a space. From the concentration of power which is emanated by the proportions of the room. From the harmony or disharmony that is transmitted by the room. Listening with the body: “What are these walls telling me? What are they doing with bodies?” Sasha Waltz’s dancers were also the first “exhibits” at the Jüdisches Museum Berlin designed by architect Daniel Libeskind, when the museum first opened its doors to visitors to allow them to experience the space before the exhibits had been installed. Libeskind called his design Between the Lines. These lines form a zigzag, placed in the middle and across Berlin. The architect’s story was about two lines, which would allow visualizing the history of tension in thought, organization and relationships. One is a straight line and divides itself into innumerable sections. The other is a wavy line and seems to go on forever. The two lines develop a dialogue which is present even when the lines separate, forming a void between them. The void, or the concept of that which can-not be depicted, which is so important in Jewish culture and religion. The museum created by Libeskind eliminates the need to tell stories, its atmosphere affects visitors physically, and the dancers as well – after rehearsals they had gone home with severe pain in their bodies. Sasha Waltz choreographed an abstract work – sculptural shapes of live bodies, following the topography of the Holocaust victims marked out by Liebeskind throughout the whole building. However, in fairness it must be specified that Radialsystem began as a meeting point for music and dance: they were joined by architecture later. Although the stage with all its transformations could also be viewed as architecture, this is only true to a certain degree. Sasha Waltz met the orchestra of the Berlin Academy of Ancient Music when she was creating her first opera, Henry Purcell’s Dido and Aeneas, at the Luxembourg Opera. This is one of the world’s most beautiful opera productions, which starts in enormous aquariums, until the sea that has been captured in them begins to vanish beneath the arms and feet of the swimmers, returning them to dry land. | |
 Radialsystem V | |
| This synthesis of art forms was very different from that in any other opera production. The world revealed on stage flowed and changed with such unconstraint and beauty that is was impossible to distinguish the dancers from the soloists and the musicians. They all were on stage, breaking with the traditional separation of the orchestra pit or other clearly marked structures; all were in constant interaction and mutual connection, with the music developing in movement, and the movement developing with the music, completely ruling out the egoism and the desire for improvisation by any individual performer that could, even with the tiniest presence, destroy the collectively created work. The emergence of dance from live music then continued in Radial-system V in the Holzmarktstraße, which already had been discovered four years prior by the musicians of the Academy of Ancient Music, the new music performers association musikFabrik Berlin and vocalists from Vocalconsort Berlin, turning the old pumping station into a house of sounds, playing entirely new music on ancient musical instruments, and allowing the notes of baroque music to flow in a free, contemporary improvisation. Sasha Waltz had created an enormous installation which encompassed the whole building, the river flowing beside it as well as the opposite riverbank. There were people on each storey, in every hallway and passageway, on the roof and the walls, and they all found themselves each in their own existential situation, seeing and hearing only music or silence. The labyrinth of stories developed by Sasha was not connected by a common plot, however it was linked by space and time. The viewer could freely walk through the whole building and stop for a while wherever they wanted, while in 15 other spaces different stories were being developed – with neither a fable nor clear clues, merely with people and their relationships with one another. The river was lit up at night, and full of intrusively signalling boats which did not belong to the show. But they still became an active part of the performance by making the small white boat with the two white-clad dancers edge closer to the riverbank, and then just as persistently row away from the bank, back into the landscape. Today at Radialsystem V Sasha Waltz is working with new music. The latest work Métamorphoses, premiered in November, was developed in collaboration with musicians from the Berlin soloist ensemble Kalei-doskop and thirty dancers, inspired by the musical compositions of Georg Friedrich Haas, Ruth Wiesenfeld, Györgi Ligeti and Iannis Xenakis. The dance works which have emerged from new live music are completely different from Sasha Waltz’s early works, which fortunately are still included in the repertoire of Radialsystem. Having become the golden classics of the 20th century – charged with immense energy, witty and with an ability to transform themselves unexpectedly, suffused with good humour – these works show a quality which is inherent to very few works of contemporary choreographers. Along with the surprising creativity of form and the constant changes of movement, these early works are infused with substantially much more than an original form, unmistakably different to that of any other choreographer. And this is the ability to show the human being in all his existential defencelessness, in all his craziness and gentleness. At this season’s celebrations at Radialsystem V marking the fifteenth anniversary of Sasha Waltz & Guests, the choreographer said: “Humanness and who we are in this world – this is in fact the only thing that all my works speak about.” The new Métamorphoses truly show the metamorphoses that have taken place in the art of Sasha Waltz since she became involved with new music. Working with live music and balancing it with the energy of dance, Waltz’s choreography has not only become subdued, but also pronouncedly more abstract. The attention has shifted from the human to the progress of musical notes. This has caused some of the audience to leave the first performances of Métamorphoses deeply crushed, believing that Sasha Waltz has killed her own power, but has set others thinking about these peculiar Métamorphoses as windows of development for something new. And that is what Radialystem V is – an open system. /Translator into English: Vita Limanoviča/ | |
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