Behave Yourself! mintrotundschwarz
If you have a question, just open your eyes to the world around you and you’ll see the answer.
This is, and has been, the method of discovery for mintrotundschwarz from its inception in 2007. When deciding on a name for the companie, they simply looked down and saw they were wearing mint, red and black sweats. This straightforward observation has lead to brutally honest work that takes you on a rollercoaster ride of responses. Last weekend’s piece at the Lofft, entitled, “Benimm Dich!”, or ”Behave Yourself” in English, had audience members wanting to laugh, but not sure if it was ok or not. I was at an advantage because I had spoken with the companie’s founder, Jana Rath, and her partner, Marlen Schumann, earlier in the week and knew they liked to explore the comical and absurd nature of their topics as well as the tragic and disturbing elements.
companie mintrotundschwarz: Jana Rath & Marlen Schumann with Florian Lenz, photo: maeshelle west-davies
Jana and Marlen met when they were studying Dance and Dance Education at Palucca University of Dance Dresden. They were very lucky to be there in 2004 when José Biondi became the Director of Dance. He had been the assistant to Rui Horta, as well as having his own company. Previously both Jana and Marlen had been feeling unsatisfied with what they saw as a program that expected the body to conform to it. Under José Biondi there was a shift towards contemporary dance that enabled the body rather than breaking it.
Jana had been working with various choreographers all along and after graduating continued to do so, dancing for choreographers including Heike Hennig and Martina LaBonté. By 2007 she was ready to start creating her own work and founded mintrotundschwarz.
Upon graduation Marlen felt she needed to explore more and went to ArtEZ Institute of the Arts in the Netherlands to get her masters in choreography. Contemporary dance was, and still is, much more advanced in the Netherlands than in Germany. At ArtEZ she worked with all kinds of guest choreographers, giving her a very diverse landscape from which to build her own way of working. After graduating Marlen came back to Leipzig where she felt she could add something to the dance scene. After working on several projects together and realizing they were the ying for one another’s yang, Marlen joined Jana at mintrotschwarz in 2008.
companie mintrotundschwarz: Jana Rath & Marlen Schumann with Florian Lenz, photo: maeshelle west-davies
Their process is a quite involved one and generally takes about a year and a half. They observe society around them at every opportunity. This generates ideas. After agreeing on several ideas they start brainstorming; gathering images, video, words. (When they were working on “Benimm Dich!”, Loriot had just died and they were exposed to a lot of his work.) This is the point at which they work up a concept and then send it off in search of funding. Unfortunately with the recent budget cuts, finding money is more and more of a challenge. Once the project is funded, or they choose to fund it themselves, they can start working on the choreography. Jana usually brings the music to the table long before Marlen even thinks of it. There are no squabbles. They seem to work together intuitively.
In “Benimm Dich!”, with Berlin based actor Florian Lenz , mintrotundschwarz examines rules. They begin with table manners and go on to spoken and unspoken standards in society. They go so far as to explore how these behaviors separate us from animals….or at least how we think they do. In our treatment of each other and of animals are we more or less than what is considered human? mintrotundschwarz’s development of these concepts is clever, well thought out and precisely performed. The use of minimal set and reversible costumes magnifies the purity of the movement. It is definitely worth experiencing.
mintrotundschwarz are working on their next piece and are looking for a man with a bit of extra weight. Sound like you? Send them an email.