If there’s one idea that ties together the three dance works that make up Club Amour, it is the sense of human connection and isolation – and the shifting nature between them – that feels most strong. Never too distant from this juxtaposition, the feeling of vulnerability and yearning resonates within. The entire experience is powerfully drawn and deeply transportative.
From Tanztheater Wuppertal’s new artistic director Boris Charmatz, two pieces by Charmatz’s own Terrain group – Aatt enen tionon (1996) and herses, duo (1997) – precede the 1978 classic, Café Müller, by Tanztheater Wuppertal’s late founder and influential German dancer and choreographer Pina Bausch.
As part of Adelaide Festival 2025, Charmatz’s two works are performed on the main stage of the Festival Theatre, curtain down, in front of an audience of more than 200 people guided to the stage, instinctively forming a broad circle around a performance space with a three-level tower at its centre. The space is incredibly vast, low-lit and begins to elicit thoughts of age-old storytelling around a campfire.
As the audience takes a spot to either sit on the floor or stand, three dancers warm up for Aatt enen tionon, one on each level on a surface no more than two-by-two metres with a ceiling height of similar dimensions.
While limbering up with an assortment of moves of a calisthenic, balletic and free-style nature, the ultra-hyperactive rhythm of PJ Harvey’s Me-Jane plays as, perhaps, a metaphor for male / female roles in relationships. Then the clothes are tossed off. All of them, except for their waist-length white T-shirts. Genitals are exposed.
When the music stops, the spell begins. From lowest to uppermost level, Simon Le Borgne, Frank Williens and Solène Wachter appear alone and separated from each other in their own isolated world.
In its 40-minute duration, high kicks, abrupt bodily twists and inversions, as well as the thumping of bodies to the floor with a self-inflicted-like aggression, form part of movements that oscillate between the gentle and frenetic. Synchronicity arises just a couple of times for only a brief few seconds.
Three large spheres of light hang in space like planetary bodies beyond the tower, emphasising the distance between us and each of them. They occasionally stare out blankly, not seeing what we see and seemingly not aware of the worlds above and / or below them.
When bodies hit the floor with such force that the surface flexes like a trampoline and creaking rings out, a sense of vulnerability both in structural strength and human feeling emanates. They are mightily close in proximity but companionship seems impossible. As beautifully realised as it is, the total effect is often one of despair with slight glimmers of joy piercing the air in hope for interconnection.
In sharp contrast, herses, duo is a beguiling fusion of beauty and fluidity from the moment Boris Charmatz, and Johanna Lemke enter the cleared floor space. They are naked, seemingly like Adam leading Eve out of the Garden of Eden, facing the dangers and obstacles ahead without self-conscious nakedness being the price of sin.
Rarely are they apart and rarely are they standing like humans. Bodies entwine and roll across the floor with twisting movements, Lemke’s outstretched leg often meeting Charmatz’s outstretched arm, foot to hand – as if their way forward is only capable by moving as one amorphous whole.
Performed under the glow of a central light, it’s a stunning performance of 20 minutes in which two organisms become one with an overarching sense of sensitivity, mutual respect and protection.
For the final piece, the curtain comes up and the audience moves to the auditorium as the set components are assembled for Bausch’s Café Müller – a revoking door to the rear, large glass panels bordering the stage with black cafe tables and chairs furnishing the space.
Six dancers make up the boldly expressionistic and thought-provoking scenes that ensue – an alternating cast comprising Taylor Drury, Emily Castelli, Christopher Tandy, Blanca Noguerol Ramirez, Réginald Lefebvre and Dean Biosca at Wednesday evening’s performance.
Café Müller evokes a story as vivid and compelling just as much as being curiously fractured and distant, ingeniously reflecting the complexities and ambiguities of relationships whether in play or desired.
Drury haunts the stage with her somnambulant steps and entranced gaze. Biosca moves briskly, making thoughtful attempts to clear the path for her by flinging chairs that crash hard in the silence. Tandy arrives, embracing, carrying and then dropping Drury in ever-increasing speed that begins to suggest a cycle of relationship repair which disintegrates into slamming each other against the glass panels.
In between, Noguerol Ramirez, in coat and wig, scuttles comically in and out in an anxious search for someone. She eventually encounters Tandy, kisses him and, despite his rejection, chases him until she meets her match when Lefebvre enters in similar animated style. All the while, Castelli lurks in the distance mimicking Drury’s hypnotic-like behaviour before her turn seems to come to wear Noguerol Ramirez’s coat and wig to begin her journey.
The ethereal beauty of selected arias by Henry Purcell dot the work’s 40 minutes to create an impactful whole, while the sequence of tableaux reveal the potency and impotency that intimacy and connection creates.
It’s hard to imagine that choreography as complex, varied and virtually without any repetitive patterning, as presented in Club Amour, can be replicated over and over with the exact same movements – being so immediate, unique and impromptu as it feels. And, as a trio of works that resonate large through both a primeval and contemporary nature, Club Amour packs a punch that is sure to hold long-lasting memories.
Club Amour
Festival Theatre – Adelaide Festival Centre, Festival Drive, Adelaide
Performance: Wednesday 12 March 2025
Season continues to 16 March 2025
Information and Bookings: www.adelaidefestival.com.au
Images: Cafe Muller – photo by Roy VanDerVegt
Review: Paul Selar