“Requiem” launched Tanzcompagnie Konzert Theater Bern’s second season under Estefania Miranda. Miranda had already brought one of Nanine Linning’s works to Bern in her first season, but “Requiem” is a brave and striking new departure for the company. It opens with a walk-through exhibition for which the audience is invited up on to the stage. Amid a cabinet of surreal figures inspired by ancient mythology, the dazzling white of the costumes, objects and faces draws them into a timeless space. The second part consists of a choreography in which the figures from the first come to life. Twenty-one dancers create the two halves, backed up by two solo singers, the choir of the Konzert Theater Bern and the Bern Symphony Orchestra. The result is a multi-disciplinary dance evening imbued with joie de vivre, sensuality and opulence.
“‘My requiem celebrates life rather than death’, says Nanine Linning, and the Bern ballet performs this dance of death with astonishing precision and profound emotion, veering between exhibition, concert and dance. It begins in a Creator’s laboratory, with chalk-white hybrid beings, centaurs and chimeras that amaze and disturb, followed by a multi-disciplinary dance spectacle inspired by Fauré’s Requiem, captivating in its emotion, sensuality and grand musicality. With the Bern ballet, Linning’s dazzling visual language creates a manifest beauty because she does not simply attach images to the music: she systematically refines it and, with this multi-disciplinary project, ingeniously explodes the form of the city theatre.”
Tanzcompagnie / Konzert Theater Bern
Estefania Miranda came to Bern as dance director for the 2013/14 season. Born in Chile in 1975, she studied dance in Edinburgh, UK and Tilburg in the Netherlands. She danced with the Ismael Ivo Company in Weimar, and in 2010 was appointed dance curator at the Deutsches Nationaltheater and artistic director of the International Dance Festival Weimar. In addition to her own choreographies and young talent projects such as the Bern dance awards, she works with internationally renowned choreographers such as Nanine Linning. Success has vindicated her approach. Having started out with Linning’s “Zero”, she has now seen her “Requiem” become a hit with audiences. Linning studied at the Rotterdamse Dansacademie (Codarts) and was the in-house choreographer of the Scapino Ballet from 2001 to 2006. She was appointed artistic director for dance at the Theater Osnabrück in 2009 and moved to the same post in Heidelberg for the 2012/13 season. Her pieces “Voice Over” and “Zero” were nominated for the German theatre prize DER FAUST in the “best choreography” category.
