Meg Stuart / Damaged Goods July 22, 2007

With an all-star band Meg Stuart exhumes the genre of the Hollywood musical though at the moment it is far from dead. She immediately slaughters it again.
In the continuation of hair-raising architecture as an existential image which also characterised her last works, Stuart uses an elegantly curved show stairway which, however, can only be reached by clambering over stacks of plywood. Where once the goddesses of show biz floated downwards there is now a merciless struggle for self-presentation.
Right from the beginning the “six-person ensemble tries to form an inhibited chorus line in squeaky yellow wigs with hip swinging and bottom shaking”. (ballettanz)

Obscene questioning of the audience in a terrible talk show which is running off the rails, wrangling and falling off the publicity ladder; Boris Charmatz as an underhand mutant. Texts by Tim Etchells make fun of the morality of political correctness: “Blair. Funny. Bush. Funny. Osama. Funny. The escalating body count. Not funny at all”.
In short, this turbulent parody of a genre that many only recognise as its own parody gives the actors space for multiply-reflected, virtuoso pieces.

Official Website: http://www.impulstanz.com/festival07/performances/id9/en