beckett, beer and cigarettes

A sparsely furnished room with a table, chairs, bottles, beer cases, four performers and one common denominator: waiting. Beckett’s “Waiting for Godot” combines apparent emptiness and the concentration that creates the starting point for movement invention.

Along the boundary between dream and reality, the audience is surprised by unpredictable situations and by objects that suddenly develop a life of their own. Alternately virtuosic and absurd, the performers stretch an arc toward questions that put waiting into the context of one’s own identity: Why are we waiting? And what are we really waiting for?

The three actors pass the time in a clever, artistic and comical way with just their beer cases and empty bottles. Indeed, Felix Bürkle (choreographer) and his Swedish partner Niclas Stureberg have a circus background. Born in Freiburg in 1975, Felix Bürkle came to dance from juggling. The Lido, the Ecole du Cirque in Toulouse and the Folkwang Hochschule, Essen number among the international artistic venues where he has worked. The third man in the Beckettesque waiting room, Jannik Elkær Nielsen from Denmark, found his way to dance through martial arts. All three find very imaginative ways to spend their time waiting. This makes for an exciting performance, from the first moment to the last.
The musician Matthias Müller accompanies the action on the stage with trombone and electronic sounds.