Sasha Waltz; The Body of a Woman as a Battlefield

One of the most astonishing works of the 72nd Avignon Festival is a new dance by German choreographer Sasha Waltz titled "Kreatur" (Creature), which explores the concept of power through the primary element of dance: the body. Without the noise and slogans, it creates an engaging piece that, aside from its stunning visual beauty, compels the audience to reflect and investigate the creator's intended concepts. Fourteen creative and top-tier dancers share Waltz's ideas with the audience in the best possible way. Each of them comes from different ethnic backgrounds, and the creator has made the racial composition a significant issue in their selection; from blondes to brunettes and redheads, from white to black and yellow skin, they create a strange harmony of various races to explore humanity's position and all its secrets and myths from ancient times to today around the concept of power. "Collision" serves as a thematic element that connects different parts of the dance: in various sections, the dancers collide in different ways, and in one scene, a tall but vulnerable red-haired dancer finds herself in the midst of several men and is forced to collide fiercely with them for survival, turning her body into an endless battlefield from which she ultimately emerges triumphant and escapes this closed circle. The concept of power is not only addressed in the feminist aspect and the concept of women versus men but also at one point, a woman—with a body clearly stronger than the others—takes control of everyone, and both women and men must obey her. Waltz mocks militarism, and the commands of this woman clearly refer the audience to the musts and must-nots of the army. This same woman, at the end of this section, captures the red-haired girl, while we see her crying, and her tall body, more vulnerable than ever, is subjected to the power's cross. The strong woman tells her not to cry, then commands her to breathe, and later forces her not to breathe. These sentences—one of the few spoken throughout the performance—encapsulate the essence of the work; determining whether to breathe or not, or in fact commanding to survive or not. The concept of slavery is linked to mythological concepts, and a piece of wood that enters the scene is clearly a symbol of the cross and bearing the burdens of others so that perhaps the concept of freedom can emerge from it (can it?). Nudity and sexual pleasure form an important part of Waltz's dance. Clinging to bare breasts or even kissing bare buttocks is part of the performance's world. The work begins when the dancers are seen in a cocoon—like butterflies—but soon the tearing of this cocoon and the coming together of the dancers manifest as a resistance against the concept of power, with bare breasts emerging from the cocoons to reach a climax in a scene of lovemaking where the concept of gender is also called into question, so that in a world devoid of love, the concept of power—and escape from power—can be dissected in sexual relations in its various forms. The music used in the performance is a strange combination formed using factory sounds and astonishingly connects with the form and content of the work. The sounds of factories in Italy, Germany, and Russia have been utilized by the sound designers of this piece to reinforce the concepts of slavery and power in the contemporary world; and strangely, these discordant sounds gradually become a characteristic of the work that cannot be imagined without it.