©MatthiasZölle

Lachrimae mundi

 

 

‘Dancing tears’

"Goldin evokes the suffering of the world in the fearful droning of bomber planes and symbolises the lover's yearning with a rose held in a powerless hand. He shows sorrow as a prison that turns us to stone, but concludes the one-hour work with the tears of joy and happiness. The important thing is that in "Lachrimae mundi", Daniel Goldin recalls his roots, the clear expressive forms once taught him in his home city, Buenos Aires, by Renate Schottelius, the expressional dancer who emigrated to Argentina. And at the same time, he seems in this work to have embarked on a new course, one that leads away from his excursions into dance theatre and towards an abstract, plastic language of movement on a black-lined stage, sparingly made to glow in a variety of colours by Reinhard Hubert. (...) Goldin's inventive movement language has achieved a new quality, especially in the group scenes: The formations of the dancers and also the individual poses seem influenced by the sculpture of the first half of the 20th century, with hard contours, sharp edges, and wholly without sentimentality (...). In this work, the choreographer produces an iconicity that draws on the repository of images for sorrow and incomprehension, translating them through the moving body into a timeless and universal statement. The result takes one's breath away. (...) As everyone could see at this premiere, Münster Dance Theatre is not just a homogenous and mature company but is evidently also on the way to renewing itself from within. With a double look, facing both backwards and forwards."

Katja Schneider, Süddeutsche Zeitung, November 29, 2000 and Tanzdrama, January 2001


‘A masterful synthesis’

"Daniel Goldin's new dance work, "Lachrimae mundi" (Tears of the World), which had its first performance on Saturday in the Kleines Haus in Münster, is a masterful, highly aesthetic synthesis, a 'gesamtkunstwerk'. (...) Pascal Seraline dances Dowland's "Come again, sweet love" in a solo of enormous virtuosity and originality. Juliette Boinay is delightfully accompanied by a flute-playing Colin Clarke. And in between, surrealistic dream-like pictures: A white-swathed chrysalis threshes around in its cocoon and dies. A bride (Alice Cerrato) tries to walk towards her groom, but an invisible hand constantly pulls her back by her train. Daniel Condamines performs a kind of St. Vitus' dance. Olatz Arabaolaza radiates a majestic aura as a court lady in full dress. (...) This ravishingly elegant feast for the eyes and ears, full of reflection and warmth, sorrow and optimism, melancholy and merriment, is skilfully underpinned by Reinhard Hubert's lighting and Gaby Sogl's costumes. A masterpiece of the unobtrusive poet and pilgrim searching for security, a highlight of modern dance art, breathtakingly presented by Münster's wonderful dancers. 70 minutes of theatre that touch the soul."

Marieluise Jeitschko, Ballett-Journal - Das Tanzarchiv, February 2001


"The Tears of the World": On the black-lined stage in Münster, they are embodied by five women and five men. They wear Bordeaux-red dresses, trousers and shirts. Sometimes they become tears of joy, and then dance exuberantly for a few moments. But not very often. The prevailing mood is the pleasure that melancholy takes in suffering; that is life. In the case of the Argentinian choreographer Daniel Goldin, this pleasure is turned into dance. At the beginning, his dancers pace slowly forwards. Ten dancers, yet only one dancing body, swaying and circling as if moved by a gentle wind. That is the beginning, and also the end is dominated by the unity of the ten. And in between: individual scenes of movement release themselves from the single body, solos and duos of quiet forlornness. A man tears his shirt with a strange gentleness. Another showers red petals from the swing of his hands... Unlike many other companies, Goldin reacts to the obtrusiveness of the present day not with cacophony and jerking bodies. Instead, he responds to the noise of today with stillness and to its haste with slowness, and against folly he sets sadness."

Basil Nikitakis, Westdeutscher Rundfunk, Redaktion Scala, 22 January 2001

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