The Last Duet

The Last Duet

2006, Duet, 60 Min

about the piece

While Bettina Thiel, passed through the drill system of the GDR’s Russian influenced ballet training, Ingo Reulecke’s career is a reflection of the typical patchwork education of the independent dance scene, in which teachers are and must be chosen freely. Throughout their careers, both artists have developed their own distinctive physical form of expression. And yet, their dance styles are surprisingly similar in gesture, almost like separately raised twins.

Both dancers share a long-standing and successful collaborative relationship with Christoph Winkler, which now in a way finds its conclusion in DAS LETZTE DUETT. Now, after dancing for 25 years, Ingo Reulecke trains the next generation of choreographers in his role as professor at the HfS Ernst Busch and for Bettina Thiel, the days of the great classical duets are over as well.

This concrete situation forms the start of Christoph Winkler’s new piece: Was does the duet today mean to these two dancers? What experiences do they bring to it and what desires – be it in the grand pas de deux or in contact improvisation? Starting from a very personal approach- their thoughts and experiences as duet partners- they go in search of the various meanings of “dancing together”.

DAS LETZTE DUETT is a light-hearted look back into the past and a playful exercise in personal interaction.

videos

credits

Choreography: Christoph Winkler | Dance: Bettina Thiel, Ingo Reulecke | Set consultation: Alexander Schellow | Assistence Set: Ansgar Prüwer | Technical director: Fabian Bleisch | Production management: Elena Polzer.

Production Christoph Winkler. Funded by the Hauptstadtkulturfonds. Supported by the Staatsballett Berlin

dates

reviews

What starts carefully, gradually finds its way to each other. What their bodies can express and show with gallant perfection is an art, which only they as experienced dancers can present as if taken for granted. Both stand at the final crossroads of their solo careers - and resemble each other not only in stature and physical proficiency. The choreographer Christoph Winkler has succeeded in creating a shared evening of beauty out of a longer ongoing dialogue of two exceptionally gifted dancers. Gießener Zeitung

Bettina Thiel and Ingo Reulecke are a beautiful couple on stage. Bettina Thiel needs do no more than move her little finger and worlds of kinesthetic beauty unfold, which seek comparison. Reulecke is a partner, who with his unique movement quality is both aesthetic equivalent and counterpart. Two such equally strong and so finely attuned stage partners as the classical dancer and the contemporary choreographer are very rare. Twins, or rather soul mates one could say, who in spite of all differences in education and training fit together like two peas in a pod. Tanzjournal

Two seeming contradictions meet in the brittle theater space, him in shirt and pants, her in a black tutu under a silver crown. The third in the crowd is Winkler reading newspaper reviews via monitor, about the good fairy, the white swan, the "siren with red hair" Thiel, "Mister Dangle-Bangle" Reulecke. Lying with various entanglements of the legs, collapsing from an upright position like a pocket knife, two dancer looking for a common form, stalking each other with their eyes.Parallel they celebrate "Swan Lake’s" pantomime; he with his accustomed vocabulary. His bendable, flexible body offers up almost all imaginable movements, contracts inwards and expands again, abruptly changing direction, playing with imbalance. Neues Deutschland