Tanzalarm!

[imomus]

It's morning and I'm lying in bed watching German kids' channel Kika. It's a much nicer beginning to the day than the reports of Baghdad bombs and hiked oil prices over on BBC World. On comes this bizarre show Tanzalarm.

"Hallo Freunde, wollt ihr tanzen?"

"Jaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa!"

What a great concept this "dance alarm clock" is! Each week a dozen kids in orange T-shirts, accompanied by some adults with dubious hairstyles and a big garlic frogodile, bully the employees of some German concern into dancing with them. This week it's a major German railway station. Employees dance with the frog-crocodile and sing about their duties as they punch tickets and wave the train out of the station.

The message is an oddly contradictory one. Tanzalarm strips the uniformed officials of their Reichian "character armour" (not to mention their dignity) only to impose even stricter standards on them: not only must these real ticket inspectors, sales staff and platform managers go about their usual duties (selling tickets, punching them, waving trains on their way), they must also dance in tightly-choreographed sleazepop routines while they do them.

Another example of Dionysus usurping the throne of Apollo? Or a kind of musical chairs in which Apollo surreptitiously re-asserts his austere rational authority by donning Bacchic garb and grabbing a lyre (is that you in the green suit, Apollo)?

Anyway, Tanzalarm is a lot of fun, and very German. Although I could imagine something similar in Japan, where pop-culture schoolkids and superlegitimate train-drivers might very well meet up in some wholesome TV sexypop dancefest emphasizing collective values. I could imagine similar displays on North Korean morning TV shows, or propaganda films made shortly after the Bolshevik revolution in Russia. Even Brecht's summer camp film Kuhle Wampe has something of this sense of joyous collectivity about it: the ant scouts scuttle happily by the lakeside (a lake close to Schloss Lanke, the tumbledown house I mentioned the other day, and where it now looks likely I'll be playing a concert myself on September 11th) while Eisler's "Solidarity Song" plays.

What's striking here is the way dance is stripped of any marginal, oppositional status and becomes an expression of social legitimacy. Gone is the conflict between instinct and society (that eternal, insoluble conflict late Freud spoke so much about); here to have your ticket inspected is a joyous submission to collective energy. Rational instinct! The instinct of systems! Instinktprozess!

There's nothing humiliating about Tanzalarm's Instinktprozess, though: the inspector himself is also submitting to the choreography, which is nothing less than a metaphor for the harmoniously-performed social contract.

This week I've gone to two slightly more "oppositional" dance events, both part of the Tanz im August season. In the first, Julia Cima (a colleague of supercool Boris Charmatz) danced the whole 20th century in a piece called Visitations. In the second, an unnamed company did an untitled piece lit by torches held by the audience. Puppets and puppetlike men lay immobile, or rolled very, very slowly across the stage, much more slowly than the speed of the audience's attention. Just when some people were starting to walk out, dramatic "hard breaks" punctuated the performance: a sudden pall of dry ice filled the theatre, white lights shone dazzlingly into the audience. At the end a figure—it was hard to tell if it was a man or a puppet—danced in mid-air, guided by wires. It was both boring and extraordinary, an interesting place to be for an hour. I spent the time thinking about Beckett, Butoh and Bunraku, and wondering about the English phrase "paying attention". We pay money for the chance to pay attention. It must be pleasant.

Comments

[(Anonymous)]

close to Schloss Lanke, the tumbledown house I mentioned the other day, and where it now looks likely I'll be playing a concert myself on September 11th

ha! a Momus concert at Schloss Lanke is exactly what i wanted to propose to Gogo, the guy that runs the club restaurant and is one of the founding members of the place.
this might also be an occasion / location to realize the long promised super-8 clip for "The Life Of The Fields" (sorry for putting this on hold for so long...(smile.gif) i am still brooding over the costumes...)

are you the only one playing there at sept 11?

eRiC

die internationale

[petit-paradis.livejournal.com]

here is a schnitt from the mecanic workers song!


Ich schweiße und lackiere
Den lieben langen Tag
Ich schraube und poliere
Weil ich das einfach mag
Ob Kombi oder Van
Ob Flitzer, ob Coupe
Wenn einer einen Kratzer hat
Dann tut’s mir selber weh

Brum Brum, es macht immer Brum Brum
Brum Brum und die Räder drehn sich rum …
Brum Brum, es macht immer Brum Brum
Brum Brum und die Räder drehn sich rum …

Gib mir mal die Schlüssel, Mann
Sonst springt die Schüssel niemals an
Und springt die Schüssel nicht bald an
Dann gibt ’s was auf den Rüssel, Mann

[nicepimmelkarl.livejournal.com]

more for godard and lio fans.

[nicepimmelkarl.livejournal.com]

http://chantal-goya.artistes.universalmusic.fr/

[imomus.livejournal.com]

Yes, Gogo has now confirmed that this show will happen on September 11th at Schloss Lanke (http://schlosslanke.de/web/CB065AAFE176440290428334D3A1E908.htm):

Momus
Omo
"and probably a string quartet playing classical music (not confirmed)"

It would be great to get a ride out there if you're going in the car, on Sunday we walked 10km to Bernau station in the rain!

[imomus.livejournal.com]

Nice icon, Karl!

[(Anonymous)]

Speaking of things Low-ish, I emailed you a while back Nick, but the email bounced. You might remember that we exchanged some emails last year on the subject of Low, about which I was writing a book for the 33 1/3 series. I wanted to let you know that the book is out next month, and that I quoted you on the 'Be My Wife' video.

Hugo W.

[imomus.livejournal.com]

Ah, nice to know I made the final cut!

E mail for future reference is

momasu(at)gmail.com

[tabristheangel.livejournal.com]

you're familiar with robert wilson (of 'einstein on the beach' fame), yes? your description of the untitled dance piece with its sense of natural time reminds me of his work. the audience (or at least those members of the audience who don't leave the theatre) moves past the point of boredom and into a strange appreciation of how time flows in nature: how long it takes a cloud to move across the sky or for the sun to set.

wish i could have see the dance you've described.

[imomus.livejournal.com]

The last Robert Wilson piece I saw (http://www.livejournal.com/users/imomus/2005/07/15/) was more like "The Lion King" than that Cage thing of "if it's boring after 20 minutes, do it for 40". There was, if anything, too much happening. (Which didn't stop Lou Reed from falling asleep.)

[tabristheangel.livejournal.com]

le sigh.

i guess even the truly gifted get sloppy and trite with time, as it were.

[chuckm.livejournal.com]

It also reminds me of Turn Around Norman, from Tom Robbins' "Skinny Legs And All." His slow turning was unnoticed by the animate characters and deeply appreciated by the inanimate.

[(Anonymous)]

Should have an s after the possessive apostrophe: "Tom Robbins's"

[(Anonymous)]

paying attention has a better connotation in japanese. ki o tsukeru , literally to attach your energy to something. i much perfer this way of thinking about attention, rather than paying. paying sounds like you have a limited amount of attention, attaching it means you have comitted to that attention. ii na.

[mcfnord.livejournal.com]

that t.v. show sounds awesome.

[seanthesean.livejournal.com]

This is what it's all about. I've been teaching art camps all summer to 5-10 year olds & this is what is so crazy about them. They love to get crazy together, & yet i orchestrate the craziness & we can corrupt other people with this energy. Great post.
s.

[lovepuppet.livejournal.com]

hello.

Your experience with Tanzalarm

[(Anonymous)]

As a member of the "Tanzalarm" Crew I would like to invite you joning us at one of the next productions and dance with us!