TRÄUME
EMANUEL GAT DANCE (2023)
In a letter of June 1849 to Franz Liszt, one of his few influential allies at the time, Wagner wrote “I must make people afraid of me. Well, I have no money, but what I do have is an enormous desire to commit acts of artistic terrorism”.
Wagner had been an enthusiast for the revolutions of 1848 and had been an active participant in the Dresden Revolution of 1849, as a consequence of which he was forced to live for many years in exile from Germany. Art and Revolution (Das Kunstwerk der Zukunft) is one of a group of polemical articles he published in his exile, which helped characterise Wagner as an impractical and/or eccentric radical idealist at the time.
During that same period of change and turmoil, unfolded the circumstances under which Richard Wagner composed his Wesendonck Lieder (WWV 91, Fünf Gedichte für eine Frauenstimme).
Träume is a choreographic piece engaging with the different facets of Richard Wagner’s work. Excerpts of his essay Art and Revolution will be juxtaposed with Mathilde Wesendonck’s poems, to create a textual live masculine/feminine dialogue score for the first act of the piece, followed by a second act unfolding to the sounds of the five songs.
Emanuel Gat, Israeli mit Wohnsitz in Südfrankreich, montiert mit seinem vierzehnköpfigen Ensemble bildschöne “Träume” in die Felsenreitschule. Betitelt nach dem fünften und letzten der Wagner’schen “Wesendonck-Lieder”, verwandelt das gut einstündige Stück den ohnehin magischen Ort in eine Kunstkathedrale.