In Ordnung

“Express the distance through dance!” Doris Uhlich’s 2020 Münchner Kammerspiele debut, “Habitat – Pandemic Version”, is now legendary. Thirteen people from Munich danced together naked at a time when any contact was forbidden and every encounter had to observe a minimum distance. Now the choreographer meets a large group formed of the theatre’s acting ensemble and ventures with them into the unknown. High-speed beats make everyone sweat and experience a shared frenzy; at the same time, they get very different bodies to speak directly to each other in an unfamiliar way – from body to body.

What image do we create together? Uhlich invites the actors to surrender to the energy of a situation that is in constant flux: nothing stays the same, everything changes. Humans require the ability to continually learn and reinvent themselves; upheavals are becoming a feature of our life stories.

Each performance works with experiences that cannot be prepared for. Every evening, an algorithm reshuffles elements including the stage design created using the Kammerspiele’s sets, furniture and stock of costumes. The new (dis)order begins on the stage and spreads out into the auditorium and the foyer. What does it feel like to assemble a society anew?

“Maybe only those who give up the assumption of knowing what a better world will look like can arrive in this better world?”