My passion for dance

LECTURE
Susanne Linke: My passion for dance

Susanne Linke belongs to the important pioneers of German dance theater.In her pieces, she doesn’t search for unambiguous political statements, nor does she let the hard contrasts of disparate emotions clash. Her works generate feelings, but they shimmer through a precisely tooled form. She addresses subjects with social relevance, but she avoids distinct associations and positions. Her sense of quality for a choreography is measured in the amount of material that has to be thrown away.

It seems to be a contradiction that, by working on the form, abstraction creates poetry. However, Susanne Linke already applied this approach in early pieces in which she addressed women’s issues. In the famous solo “Im Bade wannen” (1980) the compositions go beyond gender issues and always leave the end of the story open.

– Norbert Servos