Dance premieres by Sergiu Matis and Ixchel Mendoza Hernández in the Radialsystem

When Chihiro Araki enters the stage of the Radial System. she seems a little lost. The other dancers are also initially looking for orientation – and grounding. Sergiu Matis’ dance piece “Earth Works” is an expedition into inner landscapes. These explorations are inspired by texts that can be classified as nature writing. Matis asked seven authors from around the world to write about places that are particularly close to their hearts. Reports emerged about threatened and destroyed landscapes.

Matis himself also contributed a text about a special species of butterfly. In recent years, the choreographer has repeatedly dealt with the topic of environmental destruction, using, among other things, “Blazing Worlds”, a science fiction novel by Margaret Cavendish from 1966. It is only logical that Matis now uses contemporary texts by predominantly indigenous authors for “Earth Works”. The Australian Aboriginal poet Jeanine Leane from the Wiradjuri tribe reports on the Murrumbidgee River, into which many pollutants are discharged through agriculture.

“To understand, we sometimes need to go back to the beginning,” writes Maori author Hana Pera Aoake. The dancer Lisa Densem presents her text, which explains the worldview of the indigenous people in New Zealand, in a concentrated manner. It is a challenge for the performers to interpret the knowledge contained in the texts at the same time as their bodies. Often it is individual words that trigger actions and lead to figures and constellations.

The choreography is based on an organic movement language. You can see lurching patterns, the arms stretch towards the sky, and the performers repeatedly sink to the ground. It’s less about formal precision than about sensing and perceiving forces. Sometimes you see a free flow of energy, sometimes a reflective pause. When there are reports of a lake in which toxic sludge has been deposited, the events become darker.

Spiritual Consciousness

In “Earth Works” the dancers move between hope and despair. Some of the texts that express a spiritual relationship with nature seem strange even to an ecologically conscious audience. But “Earth Works” calls on us not to stand idly by and watch our planet being destroyed.

The premiere took place as part of the cooperation between Tanzfabrik Berlin and Radialsystem. The two institutions have been working together since 2019 to improve the presentation conditions for dance artists. The second premiere of the evening was an intimate work by Ixchel Mendoza Hernández. In “The Infinite Gesture” the three dancers long for physical closeness and connection. The choreographer created the trio together with the dancers Sebastian Elias Kurth and Emeka Ene.

The performers slide their hands over each other’s bodies. This doesn’t look like a threesome between a woman and two men. The sensitive touches become rougher as soon as two glow sticks come into play. The trio is not so much a study of social interaction and invasive behavior as an attempt to celebrate the “infinity of others”. When the bodies merge at the end, the piece becomes a cuddly soft cuddle party.