AK09 review: Solos at the Skycity Theatre

Solos, with Susanne Linke. Photo / Supplied

Susanne Linke is 64, a pioneer of German dance theatre, an icon who has collected many accolades. The four solos presented in this New Zealand premiere range from Transfiguration, made in 1978; Bathtubbing, perhaps her most famous work, from 1980; Flood from 1981 and Transmigration, created in 2008. It is a selection to illustrate the span of her career, and her modus operandi of "letting the body speak directly about oneself." Linke herself performs the first and last items on the programme.

Bathtubbing (music by Eric Satie) is a most intimate study in which we first meet her - sitting on the loo. It is a far from vulgar or explicit or confrontational point of introduction, but intensely personal and takes us straight to a place of dreamlike introversion. Dressed in a silky gown of palest hue which reveals her slender strength and emphasises her hypermobile feet and expressive arms, she dethrones with utmost elegance and approaches her bathtub, rose coloured towel to hand.

There the illusion of peace is rapidly dissolved and her ensuing duet with the bathtub, perching, scrubbing, balancing, wiping, swinging and revolving evokes elements of compulsion and even fear – with a shocking finale.

The almost childlike body of Mareike Franz, who performs next in Transfiguration, so faithfully echoes Linke's own essence that we feel we might have moved back – maybe four decades – in time! The same sinuous spine, eloquent limbs and highly expressive feet, are bewitching in this study of life transcending death.

Urs Dietrich, in Flood, which most beautifully explores the inner landscape of frustration and depression with a magical roll of liquid blue silk , transcends gender - neither loosing nor confusing his own masculinity – to again echo the choreographer's signature physicality and expression, down to the swing of his long ponytail.

Then Linke is back in person, this time cat-like and highly sculptural, in Transmigration, which examines the "animalistic aspect of humans and the human element of animals."

Linke's messages and meanings are simple and simply expressed in the programme notes. The art and the beauty is all in the movement, of its time, gently evolving and a real treat to see.