©MatthiasZölle

Papirene Kinder

A choreographic novel

Problem of emigration shown in moving pictures

"Emigrated children who can only keep contact to their mother by mail - they are “paper children”. An incredibly sad Jiddish song tells their stories. Uncounted sepharic Jews of the Russian Schtetl share this experience: the young generation emigrated frightened and hopeful at the same time. Those left back home keep their letters like treasures and continue to read them to one another. (...) The first part talks of emigration. Two male and three female dancers in simple work clothes, with sloping shoulders, move together in waving movements. Driven by Smetana’s dramatic music, they often use emotional gestures falling pray without or leaving the audiance with bad feelings.(...) The second part appears much more varied and brittle. The sound mix is overlapped by rustling and atmospheric noise and changes from heavy tragic sounds to very happy danceable Klezmer music."

Dagmar Klein, Gießener Allgemeine Zeitung, 26 July 1996


Yes, romantic

"You cannot unroot a tree, and you cannot do the same with human beings - unfortunately. (...) In Münster’s theatre the dance theatre company shows how to despair of refugees unseparably mixes with hope. (...) Goldin obviously has woken up in his company humanity, romanticism, sensuality and eroticism. Everyone dances for the other one. They are happy to be dancers. And the audiance is happy, too. (...) With a change of feelings, with reflexions for the past and the future, Goldin sends his very personal thoughts on emigration swaying towards an open end."

Kirsten Meyer, Münstersche Zeitung, 16 September 1996


To face one’s own history in something strange

"(...) This piece tells the story of a group of Jewish emigrants, their departure into the future and their bonds to the traditional past. Daniel Goldin and company succeeded in balancing both sides, the old and the new. Very poetic and without any schoole-masterly gestures Goldin shows that human dignity exists between these elements. In the foreign medium of dance and the history of strangers, a recurrent German theme was reflected in an adequately melancholic but not in a self-tormenting way. Saying that at the end of a hopeful departure in the very beginning, one’s own story can and has to be lived."

Hans Butterhof, Recklinghäuser Zeitung, 18 September 1996


"How do you dance about immigration and the feelings of loss and elation that the journey entails? This task was taken on masterfully by the Dance Theatre of the Städtische Bühnen Münster, which made its U.S. debut Friday night at the Bing Theatre on the campus of USC. […] But if “theatrical diary” is the engine for “Papirene Kinder”, poetic movement is the fuel. Gestures were tilled and nuanced; sculptural units evolved into danced passages artfully, evoking vivid emotions with enigmatic details. […]"

Jennifer Fisher, Los Angeles Times, 5 May 1997

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