Chanukah I – A Prologue
rework 2024
venue:
Waschhaus Potsdam (Kesselhaus), Schiffbauergasse 6
doors: 19h30 start: 20h00
discription
– A photograph. 1927, Berlin. A large, mirrored room. A villa. A social gathering. 46 people. A family. Friends. Formally dressed. The ruins of a celebration: cracked champagne, the remains of a rich meal on silver platters, a white tablecloth. A wedding. The flash illuminates, fixes, frames the moment. Of the 7 children seated in the front row, a girl, 8 years old, an innocent gesture. She holds her hand in front of her eyes: ‘So the flash won’t blind me…those were the happy times’, she will testify 60 years later in Buffalo, New York. When her granddaughter describes the photo to a young man, her roommate, in Paris on December 7th, 2004, she will add: ‘She was the only survivor. In a way, we could have been neighbors.’ It was Chanukah, her twenty-sixth, his first. –
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Our prologue, Chanukah I, returns for another round. Without compromising the 2023 version, the 2024 rework will subtly incorporate current timestamps. For all those who were unable to attend last time, for future collaborators, old and new friends, or simply lovers of special evenings, the prologue will once again be brought to the stage. It will continue to serve as a kind of foyer for the overall Chanukah project.
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The evening begins with a low, melodic hum.
Two players and four musicians enter the stage. Seated at separate tables, the players begin to share a dialogue already in progress. The original text, presented in German and English, is arranged into nine pieces, the number of candles on the Chanukah menorah. Each piece unfolds new details as we roam across a century, through the past, present and into the future. Dates and locations are marked – somewhere between 1924 and 2031, in Duisberg, Amsterdam, New York. Memories emerge from the fog. We learn of resignation and possible hope. Overlapping paths are discovered as well as near misses in space, time, and thought.
With a lightness that never betrays the gravity of the themes, the players deal with questions of resentment, resistance, reconciliation, self-assertion, and the significance of survival from the perspective of a ‚third generation‘. The music shapes temporal surfaces, folds spaces, uses dissonance to make contradictions and frictions sensuously tangible, or enters the world as a simple song. It becomes clear that the evening itself is another beginning to an ongoing story. The initial humming has intensified. Minor becomes major. The evening has formed into a prologue, foreshadowing what is to come.
With Chanukah I, the public is invited to enter the ruins of a celebration where music and text create a soundscape as delicate as it is powerful. Where appropriate, the evening will not avoid humor. It does not, however, seek a simple reconciliation with the status quo.
With: Kate Hannah Weinrieb (text, speaker) Eleonora Savini (violin) Thorsten Müller (clarinet) Brueder Selke (cello, piano, ambient sound) Sebastian Weise (text, speaker) Sound Technician: Lukas Höglmüller Motif/Etching: Holger Podßuweit Production: Libertalia e.V. (2023) with the kind support of the City of Potsdam
Information: overall Chanukah project
THX @:
Libertalia e.V. 