A Journey of Healing
Across North Africa, the all-night music-dance-trance ritual called lila (pronounced lee-lah) is celebrated as a means for spiritual healing.
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Elongated bodies meticulously keep time stepping on demi-pointe to the hard driving techno-beat. They crisscross the stage in various groupings from different directions with their prissy steps sporting opaque nylon knee socks, bare limbs, and nude colored leotards. The costumes by Rebecca Hytting amplify the picture of constricting uniformity; at the same time, they reveal the individual body shapes and builds of the seventeen highly trained dancers of tanzmainz. Trapped in a throbbing playlist and choreography of constrained energy, these bodies look like humans on a conveyor belt—intermittently exposing micro-signs of desperateness for escape. And occasionally some do escape—that’s when it gets interesting. Such is the set-up for Sharon Eyal’s “Soul Chain” created for and performed by tanzmainz, the contemporary dance company of the Staatstheater Mainz in Germany.
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Tanzmainz in “Soul Chain” by Sharon Eyal. Photograph by Andreas Etter
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Across North Africa, the all-night music-dance-trance ritual called lila (pronounced lee-lah) is celebrated as a means for spiritual healing.
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