His choreographic debut in the Netherlands is now almost eighteen years ago. Like a kind of Carabosse, the black-skirted fairy The Sleeping Beautythe German Marco Goecke (50) made his entrance, with a choreography that surrounded the dancers of Scapino Ballet Rotterdam in darkness and covered their bodies with black butterflies. The Rest is Schweigen (Hamlet’s last words) was about death, neurotic vitality, fears, dreams, in short, about everything that makes a person human.
Even then he was demonstrating the style that would become his signature, ever more perfected: a meticulously timed and articulate shivering, fluttering, dribbling, scribbling and squirming, especially of the upper body, performed at a nervous tempo and a sublime direction of rising and falling. go off, always set in an atmospheric twilight. An outspoken dance language that, in all the ballets he made afterwards, folds amazingly effortlessly around the chosen music, whether it is by Ravi Shankar, by Tchaikovsky or Patti Smith and that, despite a high degree of abstraction, still arouses emotions and emotion.
In the past eighteen years he developed into a much sought-after choreographer and (in 2019) became artistic director of Staatsballett Hannover. He exchanged Scapino in 2008 for the Nederlands Dans Theater in The Hague. This completes the circle: he once came to the Royal Conservatory in The Hague as a dance student. The bond with the Netherlands is the starting point for his new choreography In the Dutch Mountains, his first full-length work for the NDT. “Well, what should pass for a full evening,” he says with characteristic irony. “It’s not three o’clock like an opera. I don’t think anyone has the patience for that anymore. Neither do I. NDT asked me to make a full evening work, they wanted to give me more space. And I always say yes, even if I regret it. Not that a longer stretch is more difficult. The shorter, the more difficult. Getting to the point in three minutes, that’s difficult. But a piece of one hour with 28 dancers is a huge logistical task. You have to ‘feed’ them all.”
Getting to the point in three minutes, that’s difficult
One should not expect a ballet about the Netherlands, no story at all. If you want to understand something, you have to go to science, he thinks. Understanding is boring. His pieces also never develop the way he initially imagined. In the end, they are essentially about him, they are his emotions, dreams, sorrows and desires, everything beyond comprehension.
The title In the Dutch Mountains refers to the hit of The Nits, whom he still knows from his time in The Hague. Comforting music for melancholy moods. “The first line is already very interesting: ‘I was born in a valley of bricks’. What is that?”
The words of The Nits are memories of a childhood in East Amsterdam. Goecke’s own hometown of Wuppertal was also a brick valley, with industrial buildings like mountains. In addition, Wuppertal was the home of the empress of dance theatre, Pina Bausch, whom Goecke calls his saving grace in every interview, guiding his own career. The other thread is the Netherlands, where he made most of his favorite choreographies.
“I’ve been sitting in the Kurhaus in Scheveningen for weeks now and look out at the beach, sometimes for hours. That is a very monotonous picture. Sáái, but it’s also constantly changing; it is a living thing, you see rough nature. It’s interesting and very deep. Also because we ourselves originated from the water.”
Seriousness, irony and self-mockery
He says the latter with a somewhat bemused giggle, as he often does; alternating seriousness with irony and self-mockery. He likes to hide deeper emotions behind the sunglasses that are part of his standard equipment, which are now night blue in color, no longer monochromatic black, which is why Goecke has been called the ‘young Werther’ of the dance world. Paradoxically enough, the dark glasses help him to see his pieces better in the dark black box that he prefers to a brightly lit studio in the new Amare theatre. He sometimes also smears them with grease on the inside, so that a small peephole remains.
“Actually, it’s kind of a secret. My way of manipulating the world. In my work I deal with reality, but in those pieces it is about dreams, desires. So I try to create the right atmosphere for myself. It’s my little trick. I can recommend it to everyone.”
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