goTriad.com

It seems an impossible task to translate the pain and horror of an event such as the Holocaust to the stage. Perhaps the best we can do is remember.

The Alban Elved Dance Company hopes remembrance will be one of the outcomes when it presents its piece "Inertia -- Remembering the Holocaust" Friday through Monday at Salem College in Winston-Salem.

The performance is part of a monthlong residency at the college. The events also include a multimedia art exhibit and master classes for Salem students conducted by Karola Lüttringhaus, Alban Elved artistic director and choreographer.

"Inertia" was developed last year during residencies Alban Elved Dance Company held at UNC-Wilmington and the University of Nevada-Las Vegas and was commissioned by the Office of Cultural Arts at UNCW. Lüttringhaus and other members of the company interviewed four Holocaust survivors in the Wilmington area for the piece.

"It was a tremendously emotional situation and weird for myself and (company member) Andrea (Lieske), being German, non-Jewish and feeling uncertain about how they might react to us," said Lüttringhaus, who is from Berlin and attended the UNC School of the Arts.

Lüttringhaus took the material from the interviews and combined it with images from the period. She is quick to point out that "Inertia" is not "didactic." The performance combines moving imagery, using a company of 14 dancers and actors, along with photos and sound. The piece is both abstract and realistic, but it never strays from the personal stories of the survivors.

One of the survivors' stories was about prisoners being sorted to decide who lived or died. In "Inertia," that scene is dramatized as the performers line up, remove their possessions and are sent into a line to live or a line to be killed.

In another scene, an actual photo from World War II of a woman wearing a sign labeling her as an "enemy of the state" is brought to life onstage.

"I work intuitively and emotionally through imagery," Lüttringhaus said. "I took stories and photos and put them on stage, brought them to life again. One thing leads to another and a story line, a thread leads through the piece, that of a survivor. We follow her and witness what she saw. This survivor is an amalgamation of various actual real people."

"Inertia" takes its title from Isaac Newton's first law of motion that says an object in motion will remain so unless it meets an opposing force. Lüttringhaus says the title also applies to the bigotry and fear that allowed the Holocaust to happen.

"Once something like racism or hatred is set in motion, it takes a large force to counteract it," she said. "It's hard to do that, and maybe easier to do that in its beginning stages."

Some of the survivors interviewed for the piece have seen "Inertia." Lüttringhaus says she was worried how the emotion of the performance might impact them, but she says they strongly felt more people need to see the performance and remember.

"When you come out of (the performance), you feel renewed and immensely sad," Lüttringhaus said about performing in "Inertia." "But also hopeful because you have tried to speak to people about it in hopes of preventing such a thing from ever happening again, in hopes of making people realize that such enormous devastation starts or can be stopped within each person's heart."

The residency is also a chance for Salem students to see a modern dance troupe at work. Heidi Godfrey, an associate professor of dance at Salem, has long been an admirer of Alban Elved's work. She hopes her students will be able to experience firsthand what it takes to be a professional dancer and artist.

"I hope they get a real appreciation of the dedication it takes to be an artist," Godfrey said. "Dance doesn't have to be what we see on MTV. It can be, and that's OK, but dance can touch us in deeper ways. The body can express things that words cannot."

 

Michael Huie is a freelance contributor. Contact him at mhuie@bellsouth.net.

Newsletter

Learn More

topCars

featured ads

TriadMarketplace.com