Built to Last

‘The same music that served evil purposes can be redeemed to serve the Good. Or it can be read in a much more ambiguous way. With music we cannot ever be sure. In so far as it externalizes our inner passion music is potentially always a threat.’ – Slavoj Žižek

Five performers travel through the history of dance – and possibly into its future. Time and time again they enter an impressive new world, in which they themselves, through subtle variations in movement, discover a new consciousness. Of the space, the situation, themselves, and each other. The constant effort to stay upright reveals humanty in all its vulnerability.

The title Built to Last arouses suspicion. Is it possible, today, to still believe in eternal values and universality? Things are built up only to fall down again, in much the same way that we long to constantly rediscover ourselves.

• In Built to Last from 2012, Meg Stuart worked for the first time with existing classical music, from a.o. Sergei Rachmaninov, Ludwig van Beethoven, Iannis Xenakis, Meredith Monk, and Arnold Schoenberg. The sound recording – a meta-composition by music dramaturge Alain Franco – acts as a time machine.