Inspired by Isherwood’s semi-autobiographical novel “Goodbye to Berlin” and the essay “Watching Weimar Dance” by Kate Elswit, the show explores an amoral universe of intoxicating spectacle. Set in a liminal space that moves back and forth between the turbulent Germany of the Weimar Republic and the present, Goodbye Berlin explores the legacy of dance makers of that time such as Kurt Jooss and Valeska Gert to question representations of death, the devastation of war but also its fascist glorifications. The show confronts overwhelming contradictions and apocalyptic visions with the palatable forms of a pure spectacle. It unfolds as “a nightmarish hall of mirrors of political and social anxiety”: a cabaret.
As the world spins dangerously forward, the stage becomes home to subversive and counter-cultural rituals. These rituals are in turn our artistic repertoire, our staged patrimony. But are they only good for suspending our machinations about the rise of reactionary politics in an entertained bliss? Or can they actually counteract the depressed feelings of our inability to act and spark a mobilization against increasingly encroaching powers?
Is pleasure still possible, not instead of hope, but in addition to it?
Goodbye Berlin is a journey through the fascinating aesthetics that aim for ecstasy and fantasize with death.
