In the night’s light
The last scene is the most impressing: Light casts shadows on the wall. While James Taylor and Fernando Brandt sing of a special night the dancers are moving with slowlily swaying pace towards the person vis-à-vis in the dark, who is answering to their movements like in a dialogue. The dark shapes are getting smaller until the dancers and their shadow are merging. The performers are painting their silhouettes with chalk. Haggard figures are evolving, who still adorn the walls, when the ensemble baskes in merited applause after the première of Daniel Goldin`s nocturne “Hinter der Nacht“.(...) Goldin´s new production is about loneliness and encounter, about desires and feelings, which often appear only when darkness sets in. Many varying feelings, which the dancers express less in great gestures than in gradual movements, awake in “Hinter der Nacht“. Goldin allows the spectator many opportunities for own associations. Only seldom a smile is put on nearly pantomimicly, lasciviousness reveals in expressive movement, obvious courtship counteracts previous tender suit for love, in the course of which desires apparently materialized. Mostly dreamy, strangely unreal scenes are settled, which convey night´s secret message without decoding them."
Petra Noppeney, Westfälische Nachrichten, 25 October 1999
Between sleeping and being awake
"At night perception changes. A flame of a match catches the eye, hidden desires win power over human beings.(...) Daniel Goldin celebrates with his new choreography “Hinter der Nacht“ the tranquility, which exists alongside of bustling activity of workaday routine. The dancers appear searching between sleeping and waking.(...) The pas de deux expresses intimacy, between woman and woman, man and woman, man and man. The scene scintillates another kind of eroticism when two high-wheeled women drag a man off with numerous hip swings.(...) A scene turned out especially well in which night invades in day. Dreamy moments let the dancers stop their hectic activity one by one. Between false and true feelings is clearly distinguished. Daniel Goldin strings poetic images together.(...) Many minutes the dancers are painting their bodies´ contours with chalk on the wall before they dance samba with their own chalk shadow. This scene is impressing.(...) Lithe motions roused the audience to spontaneous applause."
Ursula Pfennig, Westfälischer Anzeiger, 25 October 1999
Desires at night
"The 'nocturne' is a melancholical dance of desire being fascinatingly theatrical. It is danced exquisitely by five danseuses and four danseurs as ladies and gentlemen of High Society with neat coiffure and delicate features in exquisite rags. (...) Goldin´s “Hinter der Nacht“ – an impressing piece of German dance theatre."
Marieluise Jeitschko, Neue Westfälische, 26 October 1999
Dance of solitude
“At night,“ a well-known hit sings, “man doesn´t like to be alone.“ The nine human beings in Daniel Goldin´s new dance piece have this sensation, too. (...) The music, a never ending stream of Latin-American and French songs, some quiet jazz now and then, fills the room with tenderness. (...) No brutalities but introverted dances of desire and frustration are taking place, a handful of human beings, detained in the cage of their loneliness.(...) Lonelily and lost in thought the individuals are rotating round their own middle and past each other.(...) At the end everybody draws his body´s contours with chalk at the wall or on the floor like a scene of a crime´s marking of the police – and characterizes himself as a living dead person.(...) Consolingly “Hinter der Nacht “ embraces the spectator with certainty that good company joins him in his solitude."
Jochen Schmidt, Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, 30 October 1999
A self-embrace full of tenderness
"Daniel Goldin`s “Hinter der Nacht“ is a self-embrace full of tenderness. (...) The Argentinian Goldin lets his dancers be, feel comfortably in their own body as if they were children, as if night was a game, which the one wins who can forget himself. And they are all winners.“Hinter der Nacht“ is nearly a venture. (...) It seems as though Goldin had allowed himself the out-of-date luxury to listen to the music and to his dancers´ physical feelings. Behind Daniel Goldin´s night is nothing than night – and what do you know: it is good."
Basil Nikitakis, WDR Scala, 31 October 1999
Variations on „Only who knows the desire“...
"(...) The Argentinian Daniel Goldin refers to his sensitive choreography “Hinter der Nacht“ about the ambiguity of human behaviour between social reality and dreamy imagination as nocturne.(...) Soundlessly slender persons emerge from behind the columns, peer through broken opal glass of the entrance of a house, squeeze them-selves through the creaking swinging door, settle down on portfolios and newspapers in the gutter, pose provocatively lasciviously at the wall and reveal their most secret thoughts and wishes, at last delivered from society´s conventions. One of them (Daniel Condamines) wants to stay a childlike clown – even as a homeless person. Another one (Colin Clarke in the most brilliant dancing scene), who is wearing everyday clothes, likes to jump in the air out of sheer life lust. Others want to openly enjoy their gay or lesbian love to the full, to satisfy their sexual desires as whores or satisfy themselves. In the overwhelming finale all outline their shapes as graffiti wall paintings and get involved in a dialogue with these alter-ego schemes. Daniel Goldins „Hinter der Nacht“ is a masterpiece of German dance theatre."
Marieluise Jeitschko, tanzAffiche, December 1999
Paris at night
"Daniel Goldin succeeded in creating a great German dance theatre performance, his nocturne “Hinter der Nacht“. The Argentinian shapes with his small Muensteran ensemble human emotions in the night`s shadow with choreographical knowledge and brilliant dance movements.As an upbeat Juliette Boinay, the delicate blond French woman, recites Jacques Preverts love poem “Paris at night“ with bashfully bowed head like a stage frightful schoolgirl. But after she pulled the precious stretch gloves off her hands and stuffed them between her teeth – as if she wanted to stuff her own mouth because of her “obscene“ thoughts – the spectator guesses that a game about the ambiguity of human existence begins."
Marieluise Jeitschko, Ballett – Journal / Das Tanzarchiv, December 1999