Latitude

The root where life and death are equal...is where freedom really begins: the freedom that cannot be guaranteed by the death of somebody else. The point where you become free not to kill, not to exploit, not to destroy, not to compete, because you are no longer afraid of death or the devil or poverty or failure.

--Thomas Merton

The working title of our upcoming dance evening is Breitengrad, which in German means latitude.  There are nine dancers in the company at the moment here in Kassel.  Kassel has a latitude of 51;  we came to Kassel from latitudes ranging from 64 (Finland) to 4 (Colombia). 

When Fred and I moved to Kassel we brought a 20 pound English language dictionary with us.  It lays open on a shelf at our new apartment, where it has become a point of fascination for Luca, our landlord's 9 year old.  Luca misses no opportunity to come visit our apartment, and it was like that even before I brought the Silly Bandz back from New York.  She's obsessed with the cats. And the dictionary.  Who can blame her?  It has color pictures.







According Webster's New International (unabridged, second edition, hella expensive to ship overseas) Dictionary, latitude is defined as the following:
1) the extent or distance side to side; breadth; width
2) extent; amplitude; scope; range
3) freedom from confinement or narrow limits
4) deviation; laxity; looseness of morals or conduct.


Celestial latitude - deserving of mention based solely on the way it rolls off the tongue -  refers the angular distance of a celestial body from the ecliptic.  And a latitudinarian is an individual who is broad and liberal in his standards of belief and conduct; one who indulges freedom in thinking.  Which brings us back to the dance evening, the topic of which is personal freedom.

On Friday we had final rehearsals for Johannes' piece before the guest choreographers Linda and Josef come on Monday.  The piece takes place at a border crossing, like those that existed in Berlin before the wall came down.  A curved slide, like half of a half-pipe, rises up at the back of the stage, 6 meters high.  Two guardhouses frame the front of the stage and are manned throughout the piece by two extras who, like all of us at the beginning of the piece, are dressed in clothes made out of the same wood grain as the floor and the houses.







Everyone, that is, except for two rock and roll figures with guitars.  Popping off of moving stages like action figures, they at times catalyze and at times embody the illusive and slippery freedom driving all of us.



Over the course of 50 minutes - don't forget, this is a piece by Johannes Wieland - this world erodes and transforms.  Costumes get peeled away.  People slide down out of nowhere.  A beautiful blond throws knives.  Chocolate and whipped cream get smeared everywhere.  Distorted guitar music alternates with music from the Balkans, driving the dancing forward.  And backward.  And sideways.   The search for personal freedom drives us in 360 degrees.