Who's Coming: Das Collectif

     Das Collectif

STOMPING LA LUNA
Friday, 8:30-9:30 p.m.
Convention Center Exhibit Hall C
Director/Choreographer: Irina Pauls
Music: Carl Orff/Rainer Kotzian
Costumes: Gretl Kautzsch
click here for program
Performers: Das Collectif Performance Group / Carl Orff Institute Mozarteum
Doris Valtiner, Elina Lautamaki, Kordula Möser, Rahel Imbach, Regina Kluba, Saskia
Muriel Gompf, and Susanne Rebholz

The composer Carl Orff (1895 – 1982) and his opera The Moon inspired the choreographer Irina Pauls to create this piece for the group Das Collectif. Orff's opera is based on on a short fairy tale by the Brothers Grimm Der Mond.

Four young fellows who live in a land of perpetual darkness go on a journey and come to a village where they are astounded to see a huge, bright light hanging on a tree. They steal this light, sneak away, return home and hang it outside their own village inn to the fascination and joy of the villagers.

Years pass and the four rascals grow old. As each one dies he demands that the mayor cut off his share of the Moon and drop it into the coffin. As a result the Moon finally ends up in the underworld, waking up the dead through its unusual light.

This is the moment when the scenic realisation of the story in Stomping La Luna begins. Gradually the light wakes up the dead and a mysterious, eerie activity of the revived corpses sets in. They start fighting, gambling and enjoying the moment of their regained lives. They search for forms of communication and discover each other. In dynamic, spacious movements they are showing their undisguised emotions. The night covers up what is forbidden, the light shows what is hidden.

In the course of the scenes the borders of reality are crossed, giving way to the magic, mystic, archaic. The characters have a long past and an uncertain future. They are floating between space and time.

As for the music, the dancers use parts of the so called Orff Schulwerk Musica Poetica, developing it scenically. Orff always understood his compositional exercises as objects of study but he also demanded that his material was changed and individually redesigned.
Under the musical direction of Professor Rainer Kotzian the dance piece joins together forms of music and dance, thus creating a new sensuality of sound. Rhythm, speech and movement stimulate each other.