TRIAS

WORLD PREMIERE

January 14, 2015

FFT-Juta Düsseldorf

A new interpretation of this cultural legacy by THEATER DER KLÄNGE

“The Triadic Ballet shall show the beginnings from which a German ballet might develop …”

Oskar Schlemmer, 1922

Oskar Schlemmer's Triadic Ballet is among the most significant — and least performed — works of the Bauhaus stage. Since its premiere in Stuttgart in 1922, it existed primarily as legend, as image material, as costume description. THEATER DER KLÄNGE undertook a new interpretation in 2014/15: not as historical reconstruction, but as a choreographic reimagining in the spirit of the original.

Rather than mechanized figurines and dehumanized formal language, the production emphasized the clownesque and carnivalesque aspects that Schlemmer himself described in his notes. Eighteen handcrafted figurines — developed by Caterina Di Fiore and Udo Lensing from various materials — were designed to extend the dancers' bodies, not restrict them: expansion instead of automation, energy instead of mechanism.

Between 2017 and 2019 — funded through “Bauhaus100” and in collaboration with the Stiftung Bauhaus Dessau — a completely new set of figurines was created, reconstructing Schlemmer's originals as faithfully as possible (Christian Forsen & Caterina Di Fiore). The company has been touring with this set ever since — a production that moves between reconstruction and reinvention without wanting to be either. Eight figurines from this reconstruction are today on permanent display as duplicates in the Bauhaus Museum Dessau.

TRIAS is not a museum. It is theatre — in the best Bauhaus sense: craft and utopia in one.