VOLLMOND

Sadler’s Wells Theatre

★★★★★

“an exhilarating experience”

Vollmond, first premiered by Pina Bausch and her company Tanztheater Wuppertal in 2006, returns to Sadlers Wells in 2025. It is a welcome revival, following in the footsteps of the 2024 revival of Nelken. Once again, the Company assembles on stage to show us the essence of “tanztheater”—a unique creation of movement and dance that is Pina Bausch’ signature contribution to the world of dance. Beautifully costumed (design by Marion Cito), the dancers navigate Peter Pabst’s extraordinary set design. Vollmond is a wonderful, if often unsettling, way to celebrate Valentine’s Day.

Vollmond—the word means “full moon” in German—is a dance about emotions often associated with this particular phase of the moon. The emotion of love is a big theme in this show but it’s complex and often ironic. As everyone knows, full moons also have a particular association with high tides. It’s no surprise then, to find that water figures prominently in the show. Lots and lots of water. What Pina Bausch’s dancers do with that water, and how water gradually takes over Peter Pabst’s deceptively simple set is what surprises.

The work begins with dancers entering the space in pairs to make their moves on one another. Water is present, or rather absent, right from the start. Armed with empty water bottles, the dancers begin by making sounds by flinging the bottles about. Bottles are replaced with staves, and before we quite know it, we are in the middle of battles between various couples who court by confrontation. They push each other across the stage with kisses, or shake each other by the shoulders or the hair. They pour water into glasses, and then pour it out on each other. Water begins as a gentle rain falling from above. It flows as a shallow river gradually revealed that the dancers can swim in. By the end of the show, the rain has become an overwhelming torrent that drenches everything, including a vast boulder that looks as though it could outlast time itself. But as we know, water outlasts rock. And the emotions represented by all this water are somehow greater and longer lasting than the humans pushed and pulled by them.

It is inevitable that the dancers get wet. Nevertheless, they take an often childlike delight in the experience of being drenched—and drenching each other—that develops into a full scale water fight by the end of the show. And Pina Bausch focuses our attention on the way in which water changes the bodies that come into contact with it, and the costumes the dancers are wearing. Water ebbs and flows and we are caught up in the crazy beauty of it all.

What differentiates Vollmond from the earlier Nelken and its field of carnations, is that while carnations can be trampled and the dance space reclaimed for the dancers that inhabit it, the space here cannot. The dancers can only find ways to negotiate around and on that boulder, and in and on that water. The dance is this space is technically dangerous, and the dancers must navigate with care. It’s a fitting metaphor for the emotions that love—and full moons—produce. There is something deeply authentic about watching dancers play and struggle under the blazing lights that echo days and nights passing in a variety of seasons.

Vollmond is a less layered and ironic a show than Nelken perhaps, but it still demands the full attention of the audience. It is a piece focused on pairs of dancers, and long solos. Only once does the company assemble on stage for a moment in which all the dancers move in unison. With the music of Amon Tobin, the Balanescu Quartet, Cat Power, Carl Craig, June Miyake, Magyar Posse, Nenad Jelíc, René Aubry, and Tom Waits, the sound is as eclectic as its dance. An evening with Pina Bausch and the Tanztheater Wuppertal is an exhilarating experience, even if your imagination and your emotions go into overload and you end up as exhausted as the dancers. Unmissable.

VOLLMOND

Sadler’s Wells Theatre

Reviewed on 14th February 2025

by Dominica Plummer

Photography by Martin Argyroglo

Recently reviewed at Sadler’s Wells venues:

DIMANCHE | ★★★★ | January 2025

SONGS OF THE WAYFARER | ★★★★ | December 2024

NOBODADDY (TRÍD AN BPOLL GAN BUN) | ★★★★ | November 2024

THE SNOWMAN | ★★★★ | November 2024

EXIT ABOVE | ★★★★ | November 2024

ΑΓΡΙΜΙ (FAUVE) | ★★★ | October 2024

STORIES – THE TAP DANCE SENSATION | ★★★★★ | October 2024

FRONTIERS: CHOREOGRAPHERS OF CANADA | ★★★★ | October 2024

TUTU | ★★★ | October 2024

CARMEN | ★★★★ | July 2024

THE OPERA LOCOS | ★★★★ | May 2024

ASSEMBLY HALL | ★★★★★ | March 2024

VOLLMOND

★★★★

“Amongst all the chaos, there emerge moments of haunting beauty”

Making its London début after a premiere in Belfast earlier this year, acclaimed choreographer Michael Keegan-Dolan’s and company Taeċ-Daṁsa’s Nobodaddy (subtitled in Irish as Tríd an bpoll gan bun – Through the bottomless pit) is a surreal, beautiful and kaleidoscopic work that fizzes with energy. Taking inspiration and its name from a deity created by William Blake, Keegan-Dolan makes inventive use of the company of nine dancers and seven musicians to produce a profoundly moving work.

The performance starts with a discussion in a hospital between two employees – dressed more like FBI agents than hospital porters – about a patient (Rachel Poirier) who, due to their lack of insurance, is lying helpless on the floor in the centre of the stage. In the face of the indifference of the hospital employees, the patient scrambles to her feet, dresses herself in a red and black suit, and white shirt, and begins the dance. Throughout the piece, Poirier is captivating, commanding the stage with acts of both tenderness and violence. She embodies a chaotic energy that forms one of the twin poles around which the performance rotates, the other being American folk singer and multi-instrumentalist Sam Amidon, whose calm presence marks him as one of the ‘peacemakers’ to whom Keegan-Dolan dedicates this work.

The choreography is innovative: employing a variety of items to create an ever-shifting stage set, including a step ladder and safety mat, a collection of folding chairs, plastic wrap, and a large, mobile box which dancers enter, hang from, and mount. Amongst this set the performers dance and play music, interacting with one another both as their movements respond to the music and more directly as dancers almost crash into musicians. Lighting designer Adam Silverman supports this setting with strobes and other interesting lighting techniques. The piece is contemporary in style and the grace and control with which the dancers move is magnificent, this is especially true of Amit Noy and Ryan O’Neil, who give excellent performances. Doey Lüthi’s costume design is effective: performers wear either red dress suits or grey suits, with Amidon marked out in a black suit. The oddness of the attire adds to the dreamlike atmosphere of the piece.

The music ranges from baroque-inflected classical string trios to euphoric acid techno, passing folk songs and Irish dances, and much is the original work of the Nobodaddy band. This variety in accompaniment is a strength of the piece and the presence of the musicians on stage adds further depth to an already complex performance. Especially commendable performers are the string trio (Alice Purton: cello; Mayah Kadish: violin; Flora Curzon: violin) and live electronic musician Jelle Roozenburg, who casts a comedically isolated figure that must be almost dragged into ensemble numbers.

Amongst all the chaos, there emerge moments of haunting beauty. For Nobodaddy, Amidon selected and arranged a collection of folk songs about death and migration, tracing the shared diasporic history of poverty and toil that binds the United States and Ireland. For all the dazzling brilliance of the choreography and staging, the moments in which the entire ensemble come together to sing these old songs, structured by repetition, and marked with longing and regret, are utterly sublime. The use of a bubble machine in one climatic choral number is surprisingly affecting, the bubbles evoking the transient beauty of human existence. In their sincerity, these moments are transcendental and capture the peace that can be found among discord.

VOLLMOND

Sadler’s Wells Theatre

★★★★★

“an exhilarating experience”

VOLLMOND

Sadler’s Wells Theatre

Reviewed on 14th February 2025

by Dominica Plummer

Photography by Martin Argyroglo

Recently reviewed at Sadler’s Wells venues:

VOLLMOND

VOLLMOND

VOLLMOND

NOBODADDY (TRÍD AN BPOLL GAN BUN) at Sadler’s Wells Theatre

★★★★

“Amongst all the chaos, there emerge moments of haunting beauty”

NOBODADDY (TRÍD AN BPOLL GAN BUN) at Sadler’s Wells Theatre

Reviewed on 27th November 2024

by Rob Tomlinson

Photography by Emilija Jefremova

Previously reviewed at Sadler’s Wells venues:

NOBODADDY

NOBODADDY