On a Saturday evening in the beginning of May, it wasn’t the usual party crowd lingering outside the club Berghain in the former east Berlin, the techno palace and former power station building that has come to sum up the whole idea of Berlin as the number one party capital. For the world premiere of Masse, a co-production between Staatsballett Berlin and Berghain, classical ballet dancers and choreographers came together with some of Berlin’s finest DJ’s and music producers, to create a triple bill in one of the halls of the gigantic building.
To bring some more art cred to the project, the Berlin based artist Norbert Bisky, considered one of the most important contemporary painters, created the stage design backing up all of the three choreographies. Created by Xenia Wiest, Nadja Saidakova and Tim Plegge, the three very different pieces are performed to techno by big names such as DIN, Henrik Schwarz and Marcel Dettman & Frank Wiedemann.
17 meters high, the performance hall used to serve as the boiler house of the combined heat and power station, built in 1954/55 as part of the GDR building masterplan including nearby monumental Soviet-style boulevard Karl-Marx-Allee. As of Masse, the room is open for the public for the very first time, meaning that this place is somewhere where not even the most regular Berghain clubber has ever set foot in. And it is an incredibile venue for a project like this; the raw, unfinished textures and industrial concrete, meeting the grace and power of some of Europe’s best classical dancers to dark and deep music.
The most magic happens already in the first piece, Quinque Viae – Dynamics of Existence, when two unbeliveable dancers meet in a furious pas de deux. I’m not sure it was because of the lack of air in the hall or because of the beauty, but the result was actually breathtaking. And for those who didn’t know – ballet and techno is a match made in heaven.
Masse is performed until the end of May, tickets are all sold out.
Helena Nilsson Strängberg
