You fall and get back up, you collapse and rise again; you go to bed and get up in the morning, the night welcomes you and the day catches up with you, winter and summer, year after year. The cyclical is a principle of life, consisting of repetition and difference: what recurs appears to be always the same and yet it is never identical. This is where the ‘normal’ of this dance piece comes in, as conceptualised by Guilherme Botelho, director of the company Alias: it concerns the permanent transformations of life, explored in the form of a virtuoso choreography. Over and over again, seven dancers drop and pick themselves up, on the waves and swirls of music that takes its Sisyphus-like loop through time. And just as Albert Camus would have us “think of Sisyphus as a happy person”, the figures falling on Botelho’s stage convey a feeling of light-heartedness and joy. Despite their fragility and even though they are constantly on the verge of losing control, their movements express vitality and happiness. Dance couldn’t be more philosophical.
Austrian Premiere
Duration: 60 Minutes
