Dresden Frankfurt Dance Company

What is and isn’t improvisation? In the double bill “Down the Road”, the ensemble presents “N.N.N.N.”, a canonical piece by William Forsythe from 2002 alongside “Body Me”, a new work by Cyril Baldy.

Baldy was himself part of the original cast of “N.N.N.N.” and later embarked on his own career as choreographer. Both works are based on an improvisational process, yet consist of a precisely defined choreography.

As a contemporary dance ensemble, the DFDC develops, presents and promotes improvisation in dance with the aim of bringing people together and inspiring them. This clear artistic profile that Ioannis Mandafounis has been developing with the company for three seasons proves, on closer inspection, to be far more complex than it might initially appear. This evening showcases another facet of the aesthetic potential of improvisation.

‘N.N.N.N.’ by William Forsythe

‘N.N.N.N.’ appears as a four-part consciousness: four dancers in a constant, delicate interconnection. The score of their audible breathing fuses them into a tightly knit unit; their limbs become coordinated individual voices that contrast with one another. In this way, they achieve a complex and intense state of musical performance.

‘Body Me’ by Cyril Baldy

“Body Me” is based on a simple decision: the bodies of others are the starting point. Every movement the dancers make is not invented in isolation, but derived from someone else – observed, touched, interrupted, borrowed, translated. The choreography determines how the movement material is created.

Bodies read one another, bodies shape one another, bodies exchange information that one cannot fully possess. There is no linear narrative, but rather a series of shifting situations. A solo becomes a duet, a duet becomes a group, intimacy becomes distance, support becomes resistance. The piece treats the body simultaneously as material and as meaning, as physical reality and as a social projection screen for care, fear, desire or control.

We are constantly engaging with the bodies of others – who is allowed to move, who must stop, who is allowed to be close, who must keep their distance. ‘Body Me’ sustains this tension. The piece asks what emerges when the body is not merely the centre of the dance, but becomes the central question itself: how we interact with one another, learn from one another, and what we lose or regain when we move together.