New article in "Tanz" Magazine

Streaming, which has been particularly en vogue since Corona, is not so new. The industry has known the "motion cut" since the 1920s as one of the most important connection forms in the development of the invisible cut. "According to the explanation in the "Lexikon der Filmbegriffe", "the superimposition and duplication itself helps to overlook the shift in camera position (or to register it tacitly and let it flow into the spatial understanding of the scene)". When in the film "Friedemann Vogel - Verkörperung des Tanzes" the protagonist jumps from one "stage" to another, the television journalist Katja Trautwein, who presents her diploma thesis with the documentary, falls back on the proven technique. With good reason: "The dancing movements function as a 'bridge' between the scenes. With the quick and immediate changes of location in these 'travel sequences', I wanted to convey a feeling for Friedemann Vogel's dense guest performance on the one hand, and on the other hand to symbolizes dance as an element linking cultures.The individual phases of this dance panorama were filmed at around 30 different spots in Vogel's Swabian homeland and in four guest performance cities. The star soloist of the Stuttgart Ballet, according to Katja Trautwein, "presented a coordinated spectrum of dance movements at all locations, or rather, we specifically performed some movements at certain locations.I've been repeating the locations. In the editing room, my editor Farina Hasak, a student at the Film Academy Baden-Wuerttemberg, sorted the shots according to the type of movement; this allowed us to flexibly consider numerous connection options. An effort that was worthwhile. Friedemann Vogel dances through space and time in such an incredible way that it takes your breath away.

Such an effort is unthinkable with "housework". But because the urge to overcome the prescribed isolation is so enormously strong, dancers all over the world have found ways and means to create something "connecting", as Ksenia Ovsyanick from the Staatsballett Berlin explains: "something that defies spatial distance". She calls her Switch Stream, which lasts three and a half minutes and can be clicked on the company's homepage, "From Berlin with Love". Not a commissioned work by the two other directors, who were not heard from during the crisis anyway, but a self-initiative of the Belarusian, who, through a WhatsApp group, has encouraged a good half of the company from Yolanda Correa to Anna Liening to work with her. "I didn't give any choreography," says Ksenia Ovsyanick, "but left it up to everyone to decide what they wanted to perform or how they wanted to perform it, and later I made the connections. The building blocks were recorded on the iPhones of his colleagues, Ovsyanick collected and arranged them like a Puzzle and (not least for legal reasons) underlaid it with a few opening bars from Ludwig van Beethoven's Allegretto of the Seventh. iMovie makes it possible. "And where there was a gap, I stepped in." She says and laughs.

Ksenia Ovsyanick didn't let it end at that one project. When one of the participants commented that there was not enough ballet in the video, she had a "Quarantini" mix done, which even the most critical person could enjoy. "The pointeshoe offers the best opportunity to present something classical. I also asked a young composer from Hamburg, Jonathan Heck, to collaborate with us for a sound design. Each of the five of us - Elisa Carrillo Cabrera, Yolanda Correa, Iana Salenko, Polina Semionova and I - made 'music' with a lace dance sequence and then sent the original sounds to the composer. Bringing everything together, sound, noise and movement, was reserved for the creator of the idea. A real house challenge, as she confesses: one week of work for just over a video minute - but what do you do "to find out how you can use the dance beyond the normal stage performance". A test for your own future? No, Ksenia Ovsyanick refuses. No, not necessarily. What she and the others want: to simply dance again. And that as soon as possible.

Hartmut Regitz