THE LACQUER BALLET

WORLD PREMIERE

January 2019

FFT Düsseldorf

A PRODUCTION OF THEATER DER KLÄNGE

“I shall make a lacquer ballet for the anniversary celebration on 6 December. One can create something very charming with simple means — just colourfully lacquered cardboard, balls, rods and so on.”

Oskar Schlemmer, letter to Tut Schlemmer, Wuppertal, 4 November 1941

The Lacquer Ballet was Oskar Schlemmer's last stage work — created in secret, as he was banned from teaching and exhibiting under the label of “degenerate artist.” It was performed once, on 6 December 1941, at a celebration of the Wuppertal paint manufacturer Herberts, which employed Schlemmer as an artistic collaborator for lacquer experiments. After that, it disappeared for 77 years.

THEATER DER KLÄNGE took the centenary of the Bauhaus as an occasion to engage with this late Schlemmer work. The figurines he designed were reinterpreted by Christian Forsen — with a focus on material and colour, since lacquer offers different possibilities today than in the 1940s. The sculptural movement possibilities and resulting choreographies were developed anew for a full-length programme.

Embedded in an interactive live video scenography and live electronic music — an approach that Theater der Klänge has developed and tested in several intermedial dance productions since 2005 — the result is a contemporary colour-and-form performance: a colour-sound-rush in which lacquer figurines and lacquer images become ever-changing light paintings through physical performance and music. At once contemporary art action and dance concert — thoroughly in the spirit of Oskar Schlemmer.

77 years after its only performance: a Schlemmer work returns to the stage.