The choreography for 13 dancers from the Kosovo National Ballet developed in collaboration by Berlin-based choreographer Jochen Roller and the Hamburg-based choreographer Friederike Lampert uses the vocabulary of classical ballet to create choreographic forms of community and togetherness. Recognizable images from ballet’s long-standing tradition are reimagined and arranged to sounds of deep house from the club scene in Kosovo’s capital, Pristina. The work interrogates the aesthetic and societal constructions of classical ballet and the potential for shifting these conceptions, together with a generation of Kosovan dancers that both orient themselves toward Western Europe and yet still identify with the tradition of the Balkans. “SYN-” is an energetic ballet, a snapshot depicting the spirit of Europe’s youngest nation, which exists beyond the images of war, trauma and destruction that prevail in Western media.
Premiere 19.4.2018 Sophiensaele Berlin
