December was a great month for Laurent Chetouane's Khaos. With several shows in both Athens and Hamburg the piece really got a chance to mature.
There are many interesting ideas present in this piece, but from a musical point of view I would certainly highlight the relationship between movement and music as especially fascinating. As a musician in this production the challenge quickly was put forward to search for an alternative way of performing music. Instead of focusing on the auditive part exclusively, the movement executed to perform a sound became at least as important. This approach was for the whole process an essential source when developing new musical material.
Its hard to describe the full extent to which this changes the very nature of music performance, but at least for me the effect is quite profound. At first it makes you extremely self- conscious and very aware of your whole body. The effect while trying to perform a score or to improvise is at first a feeling of having way to much to think about. Then it becomes more fluid, acting more as way of reminding you of yourself while performing, newer letting you loose yourself in the music.
There is a point towards the end of the show where the question of priority is very clearly formulated: Does the search for the right sound produce the music or is the opposite the case? This beautiful and powerful question is of cource strong when dealing with performing musicians but is taken to a whole new level when Chetouane's four brilliant dancers are also thrown into the mix.
Next performance is at Tanzquartier in Vienna in February.
With Artiom Shishov, Tilman Kanitz, Tilman O'Donnell, Mikael Marklund, Kotomi Nishiwaki, Bilal Elhad, Johann Günther and Jan Maertens.