Alle Augen Staunen

The ocean has a fever! The earth shakes with rage! The air is suffocating!

“Alle Augen Staunen” establishes a choreographic approach to climate (change), ecology and non-human life forms, which negotiates these as constant processes of transformation and circulation, becoming and passing away. This creates ambiguous worlds that understand astonishment as a mode of perceiving the world. Between abstraction and figuration, the theatre space unfolds into an independent ecosystem, whose boundaries extend beyond the edge of the stage and interact with it. Mediation and togetherness are elementary components of the play, challenging all adult and child spectators to experience themselves as part of a circulating system and to trust their own perception, imagination and capacity for transformation.

The stage breathes, pulsates, proliferates and vibrates. A constantly changing landscape is created before our eyes, in which the stage light turns the floor into ice floes, the sound is caught in a silent underwater world and the textiles hanging from the ceiling float in the wind of movement. Gradually, the landscape sheds its skin and three beings become visible. They begin to discover the wondrously porous environment, to move within it, to question it, and in the process discover that they are not alone.

“Alle Augen Staunen” deals with environmental phenomena such as weather phenomena or landslides, the interplay of living beings and nature and poses the question of mutual responsibility and relevance. The elements of the theatre space – movement, sound, stage and light – become equal actors in a larger ecosystem. In it, musical sound layers appear as climatic zones, colours and forms are exposed to different atmospheres and temperature fluctuations, and movement and choreography unfold as organic, cellular and amorphous transformations. All Eyes Astonished invites us to discover ecosystems in the air, on land and under water with all our senses.

What do we see when we (don’t) trust our eyes? And what can we not close our eyes to? If we understand ourselves as part of a larger organism and recognise that objects, like living beings, have a life of their own, the question also arises: who is looking back at whom? As a dance piece for young and adult audiences, “Alle Augen Staunen” understands the theatre space as a possibility for encounter and mutual involvement. When the stage world suddenly changes colour from fiery red to cold blue, it happens that one’s own imagination creates a cool breeze that blows through the space in a sensually perceptible way. The textile and organic landscape, which we can almost hear breathing at some moments, allows all those present and involved – spectators, performers, technicians, moving and still objects – to come alive, to be together and sometimes even to be in the middle of it.