Freedomballet FREE
Alone • War • Liberation

  
    >>A dance tryptich about Freedom LIBERATION, National Socialism ALONE and War WAR.  
   

WAR

Intro | Alone | War | Liberation | Synopsis.pd

'War' will open with four dancers who dance modern on the 7th (Leningrad) symphony of Dimitri Shostakovich. Each dancer carries a mask as they each represent an anonymous soldier, since a Chief of State would never send his own son or daughter to the battlefield. Furthermore, the dancers wear masks to defocus the public from the face towards the body and to see the soul of the dying dancers leaving the body after they die. Instead of the mirror, black and white photos and slides are projected about the Second World War.

 Berlin 1943

The first four dancers wear besides masks also black uniforms to represent the Nazi-regime. After a while four new dancers, with green uniforms and again masks, enter the stage. These allied soldiers (dancers) come from the public. Through this way the public will participate in the war of liberation.

The eight dancers fight until the bitter end and they all die. Like in each war, there are also no winners in part ‘War'. If a dancer dies a beam of light with a hook in it comes down from heaven. The dying dancer hangs his mask and uniform on the hook, whereupon the hook raises the dancer upon his knees. Afterwards the beam of light and the soul (the uniform and the mask) leave the body. The dancer without a mask is like your brother, father, sister, uncle, etc and rests in peace with spread forearms, like a cross. The killed allied and Nazi-soldiers wear white underclothes with their name on it. Among the dancers are the twin brothers C. Gronert and T. Gronert who both died on the 19th of September 1944 during the air landings around Arnhem (Operation Marketgarden).

A few minutes before the end of 'War', a group of extras will interrupt the dance by marching from right to left (East to West). They will march for one minute at the rear of the stage. In the meantime the public will hear an eyewitness report from the Auschwitz-death march. In the next minute there is just one-minute silence.

Remark:

The extras represent 58,000 prisoners who had to march to other concentration camps, ten days before the liberation of Auschwitz at January 27th 1945. During the death march, which lasted from January 17th to 21st 1945, about 20,000 prisoners died through malnutrition, exhaustion, cold (-20oC) and execution. The extras walk in their own clothes. As I can and will not visualise the horrors of the death march, which I walked myself on January 18th and 19th 2004. By the way, the liberation of Auschwitz is annually commemorated -as the end of the holocaust- at the mirror monument ‘Nooit Meer Auschwitz' (Never More Auschwitz) in Amsterdam and in many other cities throughout the world.

After the interruption of two minutes the dance continues. ‘War' is not yet finished. The last two dancers fight in a thrilling life-and-death duet. The dancers are well-matched and after an exhausting fight they finally kill each other. When the souls leave the dead bodies we see that they were brothers.

Finally, the eight killed dancers (white crosses) form a military cemetery, which one can find throughout Europe.

Synopsis
Theme Dance Music Length
Antiwar Modern Classic 27 min

 

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Freedomballet FREE creates not only beauty but also incites discovery, stimulates reflection, and genearates self-knowledge. Eventually the dance-tryptich will increase understanding, exchange, and cooperation between governments, companies and people, in order to avoid war in the future. The 55 millions victims of the Second World War, the survivors and the generations after them deserve this.