(2022) META | MOR | PHOS – A Triadic Fiction

Description

In this centenary year, the Chicago-based Hedwig Dances reimagines the “Triadic Ballet” in an approximately 40-minute fluid, experimental interpretation and co-production with the Bauhaus Dessau Foundation. The new work, “Meta | Mor | Phos – A Triadic Fiction,” premiered at the Bauhaus Museum in Dessau, Germany on September 1, 2 and 4, 2022. Schlemmer’s original costume designs serve as a form of exoskeletons from which new figures, and a new evolution of humanity, emerge. Following a prologue in which the historical costumes appear, “Meta | Mor | Phos” demonstrates how, through the metaphor of insect metamorphosis (larva, pupa, imago), a new image of humanity can emerge. In this way, Schlemmer’s “Triadic Ballet” is reactivated as a living, unfinished experiment in human transformation, this time re-connected to the natural world.

Schlemmer’s “Triadic Ballet” is an icon of avant-garde dance and performance art. It premiered 100 years ago in Stuttgart, Germany, and was subsequently further developed by its creator Oskar Schlemmer at the Bauhaus. To this day, the costumes Schlemmer designed for this constructivist abstract ballet, which he characterized as sculptures moved by dancers, continue to inspire reproductions, adaptations, and homages.

As a painter, sculptor, designer, and movement theorist living through a time of rapid industrialization, Oskar Schlemmer was fascinated by the transformative abilities of the body in different material, formal, and spatial contexts. He continually rearranged his Triadic costumes to experiment with, and mirror, humanity’s evolving relationship with technology. That relationship is also reflected in the dance’s abstract-geometric environment. His “Triadic Ballet” posited that technology would radically alter the trajectory of human existence.

This thesis has proved prescient. Technology has fundamentally transformed humanity, but not always for the better. Today, Schlemmer’s 1920’s era enthusiasm for technology is exchanged for a renewed appreciation for humanity’s ties to the natural world. In an age of climate change and environmental degradation, this co-production focuses on how humans can connect with natural non-human life forms for the benefit of their own species as well as the planet as a whole.

Cast