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As mentioned in the press release, etymologically ballet and ballistics come from the same root, “ballein”, which means “to throw as to hit“. After three years of research on dance and danger and asking questions such as “How dance can be triggered by violence and aggression?”, the choreographer Diego Agulló created a piece that plays with the tension between pain and joy (of the voyeur).

The blind-folded performers asked the audience that was surrounding the stage to literally hit them with tennis balls and after a moment of hesitation, yellow balls were flying in the space (shouts reverberated:“Harder, even more, harder!“), however, as intended, the play turned the other way around and this time the audience became the target of the dancers and everyone was trying to protect their bodies – the sound played well with the tension. Reminiscent of BDSM plays… In between, the violence (!) was interrupted by few moments of, say, dance by imitating the movements of the previous play – I still wonder, if the „dance“ was necessary.

Diego Agulló: Ballein: throwing dance. 28.01.2017, Dock 11, Berlin