Family festival with dance – successful start to the year for the TU Dresden children’s and youth dance studio
Publication in the DNN of 27.01.2009
The large hall of the Dresden Congress Center is filled to capacity. A number of visitors stand on the sidelines, the stairs are besieged. In their costumes, the young and youngest dancers dash back and forth to make sure that their fathers, mothers, grandmothers, grandfathers, siblings and friends have come. For them, the excitement also grows and increases once again when they discover their little or even bigger star made up and preened in the hustle and bustle. Then it’s time to go.
The young members of the TU Dresden’s children’s and youth dance studio open the gala with a birthday dance choreographed by Maud Butter. Founded in 1977 by Gerd and Bärbel Hölzel, the ensemble has a good 120 members aged between four and 18 and has toured as far as Israel, returned home from festivals with numerous prizes and is the winner of the Saxon Youth Art Prize of the State Association for Cultural Education for Children and Young People. Then it’s a truly colorful round dance through times and styles. The youngest members of the ensemble are small but mighty as clowns.
Carefully guided, challenged and thus encouraged by Bärbel Hölzel. In general, all of the work, including that of Zivana Veisarova and Sabine Kotzsch, gives the impression that they do justice to the children and young people, picking them up where they are with their talents and abilities and continuing from there. On this afternoon, the great joy of moving, presenting oneself and showing what one can do remains the greatest motivation for all the scenes and dances, in which one can easily recognize the degree of perseverance, energy and empathy that may have preceded the often short results of the dancers and their teachers. There is a shortage of male dancers. But those who are able to present themselves stand up to the large number of their female, highly motivated colleagues. In a cheerful “trio”, a little charmer has to decide between two admirers and chooses to flee. Witches, big and small, and rides on broomsticks are popular motifs that combine folkloristic approaches with contemporary dance forms. Little Witches , but you can also sense the dedication with which a group of young girls devote themselves to the courtly discipline of a gavotte at the court of Augustus the Strong.
When show elements are then added to some of the works, the exuberance is really good for everyone and the spark is so strong that the youngest members of the audience are no longer able to stay in their seats, dancing in the aisles and registering themselves as youngsters. Two interesting contributions are the results of a workshop in which everyone was given the same music to create freely. Three young dancers have fun on the beach to the sound of splashing, while a fit frog scares a flock of young ducks into a fitness frenzy. What a wonderfully exhilarated troupe of dancers do to disco sounds under colorful hats with upbeat break-dance quotes is guaranteed to win points and admiration at any party.
*** Translated with www.DeepL.com/Translator (free version) ***
The “little ones” also have “big” guests on this day, the adult members of the TU folklore dance ensemble “Thea Maass” present excerpts from their repertoire in choreographies by Aenne Goldschmidt, Rosemarie Ehm-Schulz and Maud Butter. With the refreshing waltz and polka variations, dance scenes from the winegrowers and a frog prince variation from Saxony-Anhalt, it is easy to imagine how things used to be on the dance floors.
The emotional and spirited finale by Sabine Hiebsch on motifs from “Carmina Burana” leaves everyone involved in a good mood. In addition, the afternoon was entertaining and showed opportunities for cultural education for children and young people without pointing fingers.
Boris Michael Gruhl
