Cowboys of the Flowering Cherry Colony, Lena Schneider, Potsdamer Neueste Nachrichten 2010.05.14
On the Freundschaftsinsel, Potsdam, Germany: Martine Pisani takes over public space with "as far as the eye can hear"
It was a brave decision of the fabrik Potsdam, Germany, to put on an open air event in the middle of May, this year so rainy and hardly welcoming. It was even braver of them to not allow themselves to be irritated by the fact that the premiere of this event fell on a public holiday, Ascension Day. This once used to be celebrated in Germany; today it is mainly an occasion for men to get together for a drinking session. Or was doubling up something to be desired? An experiment to see how contemporary international dance and contemporary German "public holiday culture" would get along with each other if – as happened on the Freundschaftsinsel (Friendship Island) - the two were to wrestle with each other for the same public space? Whether it was a coincidence or planned that way, the meeting up of the two is a rare occurrence. Those who celebrate the one generally don’t know what to make of the other, and they often don’t want to know anyway. Intentionally or not, with the German premiere of her piece "as far as the eye can hear", Martine Pisani gave the two sides – the ticket-holding audience and the drinking community – no choice in the matter. A group of partying young men, who had installed themselves and their beer on the Freundschaftsinsel and were festively "ruling the roost", had to put up with the disturbance caused on their territory by Pisani’s dancers as they moved about in their strange and exaggerated way. In contrast, the visitors of the Tanztage event – International Festival for Dance and Performance – could hardly ignore the presence of the beer-drinking youth, who stubbornly defended their patch next to the improvised stage. Seldom has the cultural – and of course the social – spectrum of the town been more intensely felt. That contemporary dance has managed to achieve this, seen by many as elitist and far removed from reality, is quite simply fantastic. And that is what is impressive about Martine Pisani’s work, that she never appears to want to be impressive in any way. This was also evident in her work from 2007 "Hors sujet on le bel ici" or in "one shared object PROFIT AND LOSS", performed during the 2009 Tanztage. Pisani’s works are exact, concentrated, yet also feather light, humorous and quietly self ironic.
Classical dance holds very little interest for Pisani. In "as far as the eye can here", dance is presented mainly as alienated everyday movements - a slowed-down jump, slow-motion jogging, exaggerated hand-shaking and seemingly aimless walking and running. Great comedy arises from the dancers always knowing exactly what they have to do, even if it is not clear why they are actually doing it. Why does a plastic sheet on a long roll have to be dragged across the grass, slowly, of course, deliberately yet without a goal? Quite simply because it has to be! It is these very questions, the feeling of irritation itself, which do a world of good for an environment such as the Freundschaftsinsel, “far removed” as it is from art. These questions also lead to the possibility of seeing the very familiar with fresh eyes and perhaps discovering something entirely new.
People who happened to be passing by watched with astonishment, surprise and above all curiosity as Nilo Gallego, Theo Kooijman and Ludovic Riviere took over the Botanical Garden with jumps, gyroscopic turns and running movements. Upright, eyes fixed on the horizon, at one point they strut away from the audience, dropping to their knees into the grass and finally sinking to the ground, as though they were shrinking away – the final sequence of a spaghetti western, cowboys of the flowering cherry colony, with the grass as their prairie. In front, the Wild West, behind, the Long Bridge of Potsdam. The area used for the performance is not separated from the rest of the park grounds. Due to this, passers-by repeatedly become involuntary protagonists, and the actual public space used by Pisani’s dancers becomes the centre of attention. Pisani can’t and doesn’t want to shut out the town. This applies to sounds as much as it does to people (sirens, children, car horns.) According to the programme, Martine’s piece “as far as the eye can hear” is about how time is translated into weather and landscape, yet this seems in no way as interesting as the question of how a strange movement can be recognized by the town, and conversely, how Potsdam and its people find their place in dance. The answer, given by some of the onlookers standing around the fence – heckling, disruption, inappropriately time applause –is not the only answer, as Pisani has proved.
Translated by Katharine Shephard