Dancing with the Berlin Wall

Dancing with the Berlin Wall

Wednesday, November 11th, 2009
Since the beginning of the Berlin Wall Project, I had the idea, that on the day of the anniversary, we would do a site specific version, to give the audience more of an immediate feeling of the atmosphere that I experienced on the day of the fall of the Berlin Wall.  It’s been the most exhausting process and experience so far. In the beginning we were going to do the site specific version in the front of the Metropoliton and leading the audience to the Goethe Institut on fifth Avenue right across from the Metropoliton. But unfortunately, the space was closed down for performances due to fire proof issues. So the Goethe Institut opened new Gallery Spaces in downtown New York. One space is in Ludlow 38 and the other space is called the Wyoming Building on 3rd street and Bowery. Okay great, I thought we will start in one Gallery space and move the dance and the audience to the other Gallery space. Everything was becoming more and more clear. I was planning to start the dance in the first gallery space and than move the audience through Ludlow to Delancey street. On the way I had images planned to project. Oh my, art is not so easy anymore... So in the process,  I learned that I need to get a permit for everything I do. It was a challenge to reach anybody from the city. Nobody knew who was responsible. Juliane and I were send from one director to another. It was crazy. And two weeks before the premiere of the  site specific version of the Berlin Wall project, my dancers were disappearing or being late for rehearsals or they had to work or they had another performance. Long story short, I had only one place I could project, we were not allowed to use the first Gallery space, the second space was too small for the whole audience, two days before the performance our route got changed, so we had to change parts of piece, the musicians who were suppose to come never showed up, we could not use any aplified sound. So all in all, I had the bare minimum to work with. It was crazy but worth while the effort and experience seeing how people still enjoyed despite the challenges of traffic and not enough space. Seeing how old and young came together and enjoyed the moment was worth the headaches........

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