Sasha Waltz returns to BAM with U.S. premiere of GEZEITEN (photo by Gert Weigelt)

Next Wave Festival
BAM Howard Gilman Opera House
30 Lafayette Ave. between Ashland Pl. & St. Felix St.
November 3, 5, 6, $20-$55, 7:30
718-636-4100
www.bam.org
www.sashawaltz.de

As Sasha Waltz’s mesmerizing, metaphysical triptych, GEZEITEN (TIDES), opens, barefoot men and women in regular street clothes walk slowly through a dilapidated room, occasionally pausing to form pairs and trios that balance on one another, cantilevered and pivoting in dazzling architectural displays, as if building something that then comes down, the only sound the wind, soon joined by Bach cello suites played live by Martin Seemann just offstage. The room, paint peeling off the walls, has three open doors that the dazed people move through. An elegiac feeling pervades as the dancers seem unable or unwilling to leave, not wanting to face whatever devastation has occurred outside. In the evening-length piece’s second section, the doors are closed and chaos eventually takes over as the people fling chairs and tables and run around the room recklessly, nearly smashing into everything and everyone around them, until an erstwhile leader bursts through one of the doors, climbs above it, and precipitates a hierarchy of sorts. Increasingly menaced by loud rumblings outside and ominous sights and smells, the group picks out a random villain to blame and abuse, screaming out in various languages, the words themselves not as important as the intonations, a Tower of Babel of anger, aggression, and fear.

GEZEITEN examines apocalyptic devastation in deeply personal ways (photo by Gert Weigelt)

Inspired by such tragic events as 9/11, Hurricane Katrina, the Indonesian tsumami, and a dangerous fire her family experienced while on vacation in Greece, Berlin-based choreographer Waltz has created an intensely psychological and deeply personal experience in collaboration with artistic director Jochen Sandig (her husband), lighting technician Martin Hauk, stage designer Thomas Schenk, soundscape artist Jonathan Bepler, and her company of sixteen dancers, who helped develop much of the movement and whose own dreams and nightmares contribute to the surreal finale, in which bizarre creatures emerge as the stage is torn apart. The apocalyptic narrative is enhanced by clouds of smoke and actual fire, the smell adding to the threat level. At a postperformance discussion following the November 5 show, Waltz, Sandig, and three of the dancers talked about how nervous they were to present GEZEITEN in New York, where the memories of 9/11 are still so strong. Indeed, when one dancer is lifted up and then goes into a brief freefall, it is hard not to think of the people who jumped or fell out of the World Trade Center towers, but audiences in other cities might instead relate to natural or man-made tragedies that affected them more directly. Waltz needn’t have worried about her third production at BAM’s Next Wave Festival, following 2002’s KÖRPER and 2005’s IMPROMPTUS, as the rapt audience rose up with an instantaneous, prolonged, and well-deserved standing ovation at the conclusion of the show.