Choose language

The original English text is the only definitive and citable source

Springback Academy is a mentored programme for upcoming dance writers at Aerowaves’ Spring Forward festival. These texts are the outcome of those workshops.

Tanzanweisungen (it won’t be like this forever) – Moritz Ostruschnjak

Performer leaps on stage with news headline sign.

Moritz Ostruschnjak, It Won’t Be Like This For Ever. Photo © Wilfried Hoesl

Tanzanweisungen is like an animated flipbook of human history: one solitary figure dancing all the moves the world has ever known. It’s a speed-chase of references from disco boogie to thigh-slapping folk, from classical pirouette, to cheerleaders’ frog-leaps. One dance skittles into another, but the performer’s sweat and breath remind us that this whirligig in boxer’s shorts is striving to stay the course. At last, he stops and exists the small podium, itself mounted on the theatre’s gigantic stage. Simon and Garfunkel’s ‘Sound of Silence’ has overwhelmed his own rhythmic footwork. He softly returns with a wry smile, holding a news bulletin-board aloft: ‘After a While We Will Stop Thinking About It.’ We’re sitting, separated and masked, facing the gapping, empty auditorium. There are only so many dances in a life; perhaps we really might have danced the last. This is what this knowing piece makes me ponder.