©MatthiasZölle

Cancionero - Liederbuch

‘The continent of sad songs’

"One of the most depressing South American songs serving the 38 year old Daniel Goldin as musical basis for his piece ‘Cancionero - Songbook’ starts and ends as follows: ‘Singing has a deeper meaning, it has intellect (common sense?) and legitimacy. After two more verses it talks of a captive heron, saying: ‘His singing is a joining of events, it’s throes of death.’ Goldin’s piece which is made around musik of Mexico, Peru, Brasil, Argentina, Chile, Paraguay, Spain and the Caribic, created for the Münster dance theatre, reminds of this heron. It combines mostly sad scenic events resulting in a melancholic, yet, not hopeless game around death and dying and expresses the feeling of a whole continent.
(...) With the playful seriousness of the theatre, Daniel Goldin shows the clichés, problems and hopes of South America on an interesting page of pictures and he borrows from the continent the motives of the story as well as the culture. However, without using even one typical tango figure, he succeeds in showing on stage the essence of a wonderful definition of the Argentinian tango: ‘Tango is a sad thought that can be danced.’ Goldin’s ‘Cancionero’ puts together many sad thoughts to form a piece that transports the sadness of this continent over to the colourful hope of the art of dancing."

Jochen Schmidt, Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, 21 February 1997


‘Dance the Anden Blues”

"(...) At the front of the stage a vulcano crater, shining red and dangerous, then black side walls meeting in the back of the stage where they leave an opening, barred by a wooden fence - that’s Goldin’s methaphor of South American concepts of life: dancing where life is felt red-hot but conscious of its own death. (...) But first, Goldin and his ten male and female dancers celebrate full life. They use a language of dance that wonderfully combines the modern European history of dancing, formerly brought to South America by European character dancers, with today’s modern dance. This history still believes in the power of movements. It has nothing to do with mime and “speaking” gesticulation but with emotions developing into motions."

Horst Vollmer, Berliner Zeitung, 11 February 1997


‘Dancing on the vulcano...’

"(...) The vulcano crater in the front of the stage is a red-hot symbol: sandbags, ladders, a high shack: that’s how Daniel Goldin and Susannah Wöllisch haved decorated the stage. No pictures of smog-polluted capitols of Latin America, and even the culture imperialism of Northern America doesn’t interest Daniel Goldin.
Moreover, Goldin creates pictures of archaic urbanism. Goldin, himself inhabitant and observer of this melting pot does not care to evaluate the South American continent by European measure. He has an own view on it an knows how to put it into dancing. Goldin creates the athmosphere by the moves. ‘Cancionero’ shows that he has perfected his language of dancing - and he managed to find those ten female and male dancers who are able to consequently “speak” this language on stage. (...)"

Katja Schneider, Süddeutsche Zeitung, 27 February 1997


‘Sleeping on sand and roses’

"(...) So the people in Goldin’s “Songbook” are oppressed by strange powers. They bear their helplessness on their shoulders, they stoop, they throw their arms in typical “Folkwang” manner, which, however, are not danced as pathetically as elsewhere. Joy in life and grief go hand in hand, so do fear and resistance. The dancers crawl like querilleros on the floor, a woman dances round a red magic circle, whirls through the sand and after that she’s whashed lovingly by the other women. Death celebrates its carnival, an Aztec meets a whore, decimen of life and death are distributed as transparents. Again and again, people escape and run onto the sandbags, which Goldin and Susannah Wöllisch have had piled up at the wall which serves as rest and trench at the same time. They dance reluctantly lightly swaying or with large gestures, a sway of the hips reminds of Latin America, no Samba, no Tango, a circling of bodies, stamping of feet - the rest is European."

Lilo Weber, Neue Zürcher Zeitung, 17 February 1997

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