I was very pleased with the performance the students presented. One could identify clear and clearly understood elements of the Bauhaus performances, including the triadic ballet, the mechanical ballet, the light shows, the use of the grid, the sense of the body in space, the black-white-trio dance, as well as a theatrical response to Kandinsky’s paintings which was a less obvious but also successful element. We had more of the exuberance of Weimar than the minimalism of Schlemmer in Dessau, but this was a legitimate choice, and one that made sense when the piece had 18 performers, too (most of the ‘dances’ are 1-3 people).
What really becomes evident from this is how much Schlemmer’s ideas, and those of the Bauhaus generally, still have to offer us. There was something very touching about this performance, as the work of students in the 1920s was reinvented by students in 2015. I might be wrong, but I think the Schlemmer would have liked to see it.
