Bauhaus ballets

The Mechanical Ballet & TRIAS - The Triadic Ballet

THEATER DER KLÄNGE started in 1987 very consciously referring aesthetically back to the Bauhaus stage works of the 1920ies.

"The Mechanical Ballet" goes back to two photographs and to descriptions of the former Bauhaus student Kurt Schmidt, handed down to us by the book "The Stage At The Bauhaus" from 1923. In 1987 we dared coming up with a reconstruction of the figurines showed on these photographs. Dealing with these figurines led us to the creation of a new choreography as well as a new composition of the stage music for piano, trombone and percussion. The result in 1987/88 was a great success with the public and has by now seen almost 200 performances, not only in many German theaters but also abroad: in France, the Czech Republic, the Netherlands, Greece, Russia, Israel and India. "The Mechanical Ballet" has been a permanent part of our repertoire ever since and we are at present the only ensemble, that reenacted this ballet - originally created for the Bauhaus exhibition in Weimar - and who is able to present it in a life performance.

In 1915, calling it "TRIAS", we reinterpreted "The Triadic Ballet", following a project plan by Oskar Schlemmer from 1922. The formal structure of first 11 scenes as well as the recreation of the figurines are almost identical with the way Schlemmer himself designed them for their first release in Stuttgart and Weimar in 1922/23.

Differing from other reconstructions of the 1960ies and 70ies our approach of newly interpreting this stage work was to focus on the humorous, ludicrous, and even carnivalesque elements within this figurine ballet. All of the choreographies, the music and the final 12th scene are new creations made by THEATER DER KLÄNGE.

"bauhaus ballets", our new evening-filling program, brings both of our Bauhaus productions together: "The Mechanical Ballet" and "TRIAS". For this, we reproduced the figurines for "TRIAS" once again. Different from our first figurine reconstruction in 2015, for which we followed Oscar Schlemmer´s design drawings, our figurines made in 2017 were made according to photographs documenting the realizations of the figurines as they were finally used in Schlemmer´s performances.

"bauhaus ballets" was first performed in 2017 in Düsseldorf´s Capitol Theatre - celebrating the 30th anniversary of the foundation of THEATER DER KLÄNGE, the THEATRE OF SOUNDS. The program is now part of your guest performance repertoire.