WaterWaltz

It's a sunny Sunday in Pankow, Berlin's dreariest suburb. I fix a salad, fill a bottle with water, and go down to my bike. I stop by a Schrebergarten - one of Germany's famous allotment gardens, which I am lucky enough to share with collagues at the end of my street - and pick up a towel, a lying-cushion, and a panama hat I find lying around. Time to get healthy by the lake!

Coming in to Berlin's Weißer See lake - the largest in Berlin-Weißensee and approximately in the centre of that district - many Berliners seem to have had the same idea. The lake reeks with population, people half naked or more lounging around, the beach cafe (entry 4 EUR) with its Hollywood-parody sign and giant letters looming over the water, giving everything a feeling like it's the 1970s. Not to mention the golden September light, which makes everything look sepia-toned, like it's from an old family polaroid.

I find the area between the Milchhäuschen cafe and the Boat rental, find my place, and sit down on the cushion, waiting for the show to begin.

WaterWaltz is a performative cycle that began in 2022 in Krumme Lanke, a lake in south-west Berlin, and has since moved around many of Berlin's favourite water-holes, including Tegeler See and Müggelsee. These are all popular places for Berlin-style summer recreation, where a motley crew of last night's revellers, families, and weirdos gather to soak up the sun and the sand, in a sort of mildly disappointing version of a beach. Waterwaltz re-appropriates these places as site-specific locations for dance via an innovative invisible floating mat, which makes the dancers look like they are dancing literally on top of the water, carefully steered by invisible ropes as the crowd watches on - or simply integrates the magical dancing figure into their everyday recreational activities.

 Photo: Dusan Sekulovic

The spectacle of seeing a dancer-on-water against a backdrop of passers by does not lose it's magic over the 3-hour duration of WaterWaltz, which repeats it's cycle every hour. It's worth the free entry price just for this: during the performance I saw, a visitor and her dog amusingly entered the stage while talking loudly in Italian on a wireless headset, apparently oblivious to the audience before them.

But Waterwaltz is also a carefully-assembled choeography. A trio of dancers (Ann Francis Ang, Magdalena Hanna Negowska, and Alexandre May) follow each other with a different style of contermparised waltz - obeying the triple-time synonymous with waltz, but otherwise free of classical trimmings and resembling something like free dance to an inaudible soundtrack. Each dancer performs a solo, clad in a different hot colour covered in fringe (costumes: Lara Duymus), perhaps representing the seasons, or simply sticking out from the lush green backdrop. First is the red-clad May, who offers energized, light splashes, knees high, the body partnering with the floating mat and taking its rhythms from nature, as thought singing out in celebration of it.

Ann Francis Ang's yellow-clad figure is a more gentle, precise relationship with stage and space, pushing the space around and driftng between different held forms. The dancer splays their arms in occasional bursts, reaching out from a strong central base, connected with the stage and soaking up its instability.

Magdalena Hanna Negowska's orange figure seems attached to the floor, connecting between the stage and the water by half-lying on both. The dancer utilises the low position through rolls and occasional presented poses, finally rising into three-step spins that seem ballet-inspired.

 Photo: Dusan Sekulovic

As Ang and May return, forming a trio of cascading movements that utilise different levels and especically the arms, the cycle neatly returns to the beginning, leaving May to open the. WaterWaltz offers a unique and well-thought-out staging concept: not only does the stage move out of its cumbersome architectures, but here, the dymanics of space are profoundly listened-to and interacted-with, and not merely decorative. The result is a unique style of movement bron from situation, and as well, a beautiful inviation to guests that rewards attention while not demanding anything beyond a relaxed co-existence, much like the dancers themselves inside their natural surrounds.

Waterwaltz

Choreography: Ramona Sekulovic

Performance: Ann Francis Ang, Alexandre May, Magdalena Hanna Negowska

Costume design: Lara Duymus

Production: Julius Graupner

Technical and design: Dusan and Ramona Sekulovic  

 

Technical advice: Oliver Ganssloser  

 

Public Relations: Apricot Productions

 

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Note: Current publication is done with the understanding that colleagues and communities from Kharkiv, Mariupol, Kyiv, Lutsk, and Lviv among others in Ukraine are currently under attack in an attempt to erase Ukrainian culture and identity. No artist should be forced to rehearse how to pick up the gun.