Strange things happen at a petrol station at night. Especially when you get stranded there. Then the subterranean feeling that there is no escape from this Place may creep in. In Kafka, Antonio de Rosa & Mattia Russo (Kor`sia) take you on a journey to the edge of consciousness. The Kafkaesque lurks between the petrol pump and the neon light. So very different from what you might think …
Refuel with the digital programme booklet on Kafka below.
Franz Kafka is on everyone’s lips. In the 100th year of his death, countless art projects such as theater plays and films are dedicated to the great writer, most of which are based on the reinterpretation of a certain text from contemporary perspective. The Hessisches Staatsballett chooses a different starting point: How can we interpret Kafka as an author and his work through dance? The two Italian choreographers Antonio de Rosa and Mattia Russo, who have long been based in Madrid with their own dance company Kor’sia, were invited by the Hessisches Staatsballett to explore this question with the commissioned piece Kafka. In this piece, the playful, theatrical and surreal aesthetic of the two choreographers encounters the world of the enigmatic writer.
In de Rosa’s and Russo’s interpretation, the world in Kafka’s texts is presented as a closed cosmos. There is no escape. The characters in it are prisoners, who have made themselves comfortable in their prison.
Kafka takes these various influences of the author’s life as a foundation to cut a path through his work. The scenography is thereby built with sneakers and street clothes, flashlights, wheelbarrows, animalized people or humanized animals and other creatures, in which the traces of Kafka’s 1915 work The Metamorphosis can be seen. It also describes an artistic confrontation between the present and its dramatically orientated, media-effective and explosive aesthetic – which is also reflected in de Rosa and Russo’s action-packed movement language – and the rather laconic and fairly linear narrative style that characterises Kafka’s texts. The choreography, as well as the music melange from classical piano music to electronic beats, provide a deliberate counterpoint of a more conservative interpretation of Kafka.
This also creates a bridge to the present time in terms of content. The conflicts that Kafka describes in his works are still relevant. His failure is also the failure of the modern individual in a technologized, globalized and increasingly dehumanized reality. Kafka’s quote “I am the end or the beginning” in the context of his categorisation in the literary tradition takes on a prophetic note against this background. Yet the fact that Kafka’s work made it to the present time is ultimately thanks to an equally Kafkaesque situation: Max Brod’s refusal to honour his best friend’s wish in his testamentary will and burn his works. Even in death, Kafka finds no salvation. And neither do we.
In conversation with the Choreographers Antonio de Rosa and Mattia Russo and the Dramaturg Agnès López-Río
Perhaps we can start with who you are artistically with your collective Kor’sia?
López-Río: Kos’sia will be 10 years old next year. We are constantly asking ourselves who we are and what we want to contribute to society? Different artistic disciplines such as fashion, music, cinema or contemporary art are all cultural layers that, in a way, make up Kor’sia’s identity. On the other hand, we touch on certain themes in our work that stem from our own identity or we try to incorporate them into the subject matter. This creates the relationship between Kor’sia, society and the world.
De Rosa: We have now reached a point where we can talk about the identity of Kor’sia. Now we really know what we want and what direction we want to take. In the beginning we spent a lot of time experimenting, combining different things in our compositions to see if it works or not. But nevertheless, Kor’sia is still about jumping into the darkness.
And now Kafka. It’s the 100th anniversary of his death. How did you approach this author and his world?
López-Río: Then followed many meetings with pasta and wine. It’s a kind of “Fellini method”.
De Rosa: It’s also table work. We laugh together, we argue together. Two Italians and a Spaniard, that’s sometimes a drama (laughs), but we trust in working together. With Kafka, it wasn’t so easy at first to decide which direction we wanted to take. Because when you talk about Kafka, you might have this darkness in your head, for example with the music, but through our research we found out that Kafka doesn’t just have this dark side. So we have to clarify that for ourselves in order to understand the stage design, the light or the music. Or if we decide that the whole scene at the petrol station should take place at night, then the atmosphere or the sound will have to relate to that.
Russo: But also the aesthetics in terms of appearance. With Kafka, you might imagine a suit, strange personalities and this kind of “vintage ambience”. But we wanted to avoid the obvious. Instead, the whole thing should be shifted to today’s society and aimed at a new generation. The idea was therefore to create a completely new story. Something that could be Kafka, but in a different way; not so literal.
López-Río: Kafka in the 21st century. It’s all an interpretation, of course. We are reviving him from today’s perspective. On the other hand, Kafka has these themes that are constantly present in our cultural memory: God, death, alienation, self and others, society, the idea of lostness, endless repetition, failure, life …
How did you come up with the idea of setting the piece at a petrol station?
López-Río: The petrol station is a liminal space that is ultimately a metaphor itself. It is a place and at the same time not a place. A somewhere and nowhere. This type of space is very common in Kafka’s work. Not only in his texts, but also in relation to his person. He is tangible and he is not; a fluctuating identity. Furthermore, the petrol station has this symbolic meaning of something that is harmless on the one hand and very dangerous on the other. It depends on how you treat this place. How you approach it. Nobody likes to spend time at a petrol station.
De Rosa: The interesting thing about these liminal spaces is that they are always a transit. You don’t have to talk to anyone and you don’t have to stay. It’s simply a place of transit. We are there for the same reason, but the place itself is quite inhumane. So the only way to change it completely is to get stuck in it. That’s how you enter into a relationship and situations arise that are absurd in themselves. Because you won’t see anyone meditating or climbing at a petrol station. So in a way, it’s really Kafkaesque.
Russo: Of course, with Kafka you can generally go in a very absurd direction and then embark on the journey, but by choosing the petrol station we reduce the focus. What can be there? We have found characters that are surreal in this environment.
De Rosa: These relate to the place or what surrounds it. You don’t see it immediately, but it’s there.
Russo: At the same time, the petrol station is also a reflection on our society and how we are constantly tied in. We realise this all the more when we get stuck in one place. You can’t completely isolate yourself. For example, we can’t live without our mobile phones. It is possible, but very difficult, not to be connected and communicate.
De Rosa: There are rules in society …
Russo: Even if you don’t want to get infected by them, you do, because everything has a connection. Take consumption, for example: you have to go to the supermarket to buy food. All things are created for consumption, they contaminate the world and are multinational.
López-Río: You can’t escape the globalised system.
How do you incorporate all these ideas into the finished piece, also in terms of the stage, music or dance?
Russo: We collect these ideas. Working with the set designer or composer is then another task. It’s about introducing them to the overall idea. We work a lot with images for the set design. Sometimes it’s quite clear from the outset. If it’s not, we have to find a clearer idea. With the music, there is a certain track list to choose from and the composer uses this as the basis for his examples. So there are different processes with all the artists involved. But all these ideas come from the preliminary work at the table; the first process.
López-Río: The heart note of the piece is created in the table work. And then you have to transfer it to every element of the piece. We often work with the same people. We understand each other artistically. Of course, that also creates trust. The next step is to translate the work at the table into dance and movement; into body and flesh, into images and ideas.
Russo: This moment is quite artistic, to translate all this information into the body. We use the structure of the piece and the dance, because we don’t have words like in theatre.
De Rosa: It’s about finding the metaphor. It can be very subtle. In relation to Kafka, for example, the idea of mirroring. How does this come about? It also requires the structure of the scene. Something that you can read through the scene. So something like a double transformation: the transformation of the idea into a metaphor and this in turn into a structure or composition of the scene.
López-Río: Sometimes it’s really difficult. We are three brains that work differently. Mattia is always very focussed on the image.
Russo: I’m more instinctive when it comes to the visuals. I introduce the idea, but I also have to defend it. In this case, for example, Agnès tried to find the meaning behind the image of the petrol station. But it can also be that an idea makes no sense and still fits. Antonio sometimes helps to come up with ideas or he discusses them and says: “No, I don’t see it.” It’s a kind of exchange. And in the end we will find a way.
López-Río: For me as a dramaturg, my job is to narrow down the topic and create a map. I defend ideas with words, at the level of the mind, to find the meaning behind them. Rehearsals are a different kind of process. I’m not in the studio all the time. So it’s very interesting to take an outside view that comes into play when things are supposed to be finalised. This external eye is important because the choreographers are contaminated.
Contamination again. To what extent are the choreographers contaminated?
Russo: We fall in love with what we have already created. Agnès joins in when it comes to separating yourself from what you have come to love. Because she is not so strongly connected to what we have worked on in the studio. As an external person, she may be seeing certain things for the first or second time. She doesn’t have the same infatuation as we do.
De Rosa: As choreographers, we also know how difficult it is to reach a certain point with an idea during rehearsals. You work so hard with the dancers, but in the end it still might not work.
Russo: It’s also therapy for us. Together with Agnès, we adapt our ideas back to the framework we set at the beginning. For us, it’s a chance to think again about where we started. Perhaps we lost our way during rehearsals? But sometimes that can also be right.
López-Río: That’s the moment when the dance piece constructs itself. There are so many practical things that happen in the studio that revise the initial map of the piece. You have to put another layer on top of it. Some very good things happen and we embrace them because they are much better than what we originally thought. That’s the beauty of rehearsals.
Russo: Every now and then we also try to create something from “wrong” things. It may not be right at first glance, but we can still find a way in.
De Rosa: And sometimes you come up against limits and can’t realise your ideas. Then you just have to accept it.
López-Río: It’s important to understand that working on a dance piece is a living thing. Because it is created by people. And it is never completely set.
Russo: We also say that to the dancers when we finish the creation process: Now the piece is yours. You need to grow with it.
Kenedy Kallas, Bridget Lee, Milica Mučibabić, Mei-Yun Lu, Peng Chen, Ramon John, Daniel Myers, Marcos Novais
Choreography Mattia Russo & Antonio de Rosa
Set design Amber Vandenhoeck
Light design Steffen Hilbricht / Kor`sia
Costume design Luca Guarini
Costume assistance Dea Beijleri
Composition and production stage music Alejandro Gonzalez da Rocha
Rehearsal director Uwe Fischer
Dramaturgy Agnès López-Río, Lucas Herrmann
Dramaturgy assistance Ching-Wen Peng
Antonio de Rosa & Mattia Russo
The Choreographers Antonio de Rosa & Mattia Russo founded the Kor`sia collective in Madrid in 2015 as artistic directors together with the dramaturg Giuseppe D’Agostino and the Professor of Performing Arts Agnès López-Río.
De Rosa and Russo both graduated from the Accademia Nazionale di Roma and the Ballet School of the Teatro alla Scala, Milan. De Rosa began his career as a dancer at the Teatro alla Scala and at the Compañía Nacional de Danza de España in Madrid. He was awarded the Young Talent Capri-Positano Prize. Russo began his career at the Ballet de la Generalitat Valenciana, the Compañía Nacional de Danza de España and Introdans, where he also choreographed. He won the first prize at the Certamen Internacional de Coreografía Burgos & New York in 2012.
As an artist duo, they have been invited to work for prominent theaters and companies, including Nederlands Dans Theater, Konzert Theater Bern, Theater Luzern, Of Curious Nature in Bremen, Opéra National du Rhin, Staatstheater am Gärtnerplatz in Munich and Opéra Grand Avignon. Their innovative choreographies have been presented at renowned international festivals throughout Europe, such as the Theatre Nacional de la danse Chaillot in Paris, Tanz im August in Berlin and the Grec Festival Barcelona. Furthermore, they were selected as one of the Twenty of the most promising emerging choreographers at the Spring Forward Festival of the European dance network Aerowaves in 2019.
De Rosa and Russo have received numerous awards for their work, including the jury prize at the 2018 Tanzplattform Bern and, most recently, the Fedora – Van Cleef & Aprels Prize for Ballet 2023.
Alejandro Gonzalez da Rocha
Alejandro da Rocha is a Galician-Portugese producer, composer, sound artist and DJ based in Barcelona.
His academic background is in Fine Arts which he studied in Galicia, Portugal and France which led him to initially approach music from an art-installation perspective in parallel to his first experiences as a DJ. From this point, he began to develop his own sound, focusing his career on production and musical composition as well as his individual project, DA ROCHA UM, and his collaborations with performing artists and video projects.
He has worked as a composer and sound designer for dance and theatre companies such as Kor’sia, Richard Mascherin and laSADCUM amongst others, whose works have been performed in spaces such as Teatros del Canal (Madrid), Centro de Cultura Contemporánea Conde Duque (Madrid), CCCB (Barcelona) and outside of Spain in France, Italy, Bulgaria, Germany, etc.
The audiovisual pieces and video installations which he has collaborated on with artists such as Ana Esteve Reig, Acacia Ojea and Fede Coll have been exhibited in Buenos Aires, Madrid and Granada.
Amber Vandenhoeck
Luca Guarini
Luca Guarini is editor-in-chief and creative director of Dust magazine. He also works as a stylist and creative consultant.
After graduating at the Academy of Fine Arts in Florence, specialising in painting, he worked for two years with Luigi as a duo on an art and photography project called Luigi and Luca (please italics).
After this collaboration ended, Guarini explored different directions in the fashion industry and founded Dust magazine, whose first issue was published in London in 2011.
Shortly afterwards, he moved to Berlin, where he lived until 2018, before relocating to Madrid.
In 2014, he worked for a few months as a consultant to the creative directors at Mert and Marcus. In addition to Dust magazine, his creations have also been published in Vanity Fair, L’Officiel, Icon and Hero. In addition to his work with Kor’sia, Guarini is also active in the music sector. He accompanies the Spanish singer Guitarricadelafuente as a stylist for his advertising photos, videos, tours and public appearances.
Agnès López-Río
Agnès López-Río is professor of Analysis and Practice of Contemporary Dance Repertoire at the Conservatorio Superior de Danza ‘María de Ávila’ in Madrid. In addition to teaching, she is a dance dramaturge, artistic advisor, creator, performer, author, researcher and member of the Spanish Academy of Performing Arts since 2021.
She was trained in classical ballet at the Conservatori Professional de Dansa in her hometown of Valencia and the Conservatorio Profesional de Danza ‘Mariemma’ in Madrid. She has consistently combined her dance training and professional life as a performer with her academic training. In this, she graduated in Hispanic Philology from the Universitat de València (2001). In 2014 she obtained a Master’s Degree in Cultural Management from the Universitat Oberta de Catalunya and in 2018 a Higher Degree in Contemporary Dance. Furthermore, she received her PhD in 2023 from the University of Castilla la Mancha, with the thesis: An approach to repetition in dance. The forgotten work.
Since 2002 she has been a professional performer in several European companies: Ballet Company der Städtischen Theather Chemnitz (Germany), Introdans (Holland) or the Staatstheather Braunschweig (Germany), Wayne McGregor/ Random Dance Company (UK). From 2011 to 2019 she was part of the cast of the Compañía Nacional de Danza (Spain), under the direction of José Carlos Martínez.
She is part of the Collective Kor’sia since its creation, where she has gone through different roles from performer to now as dance dramaturg, with whom she won the prestigious Fedora Dance Prize in 2022.
Ching-Wen Peng
Ching-Wen Peng, born in Taiwan, has been working as a writer, dramaturg and theater director in different contexts. In Taiwan, she worked as a dramaturg in a self-founded theatre group, The Cyclops Troupe, from 2014 to 2018. Her award-winning fantasy novel The City of Windows was published in a collection in 2017. At the moment, she works as a columnist for the web magazine Performing Arts Review (PAR) since 2024. In Germany, she has been developing several projects as director such as short film and performance, which were presented in Wiesbaden and Frankfurt am Main. Among them, Welcome to the World of Double Narratives, which focuses on constructed ideology as a social phenomenon in postcolonial discourse, was premiered at Internationale Maifestspiele Wiesbaden 2023. The same year, 2023, she was invited to the Artist-in-Residency by PACT Zollverein (Essen) to further develop her current directing project.
»You should remember these Spaniards.« – Darmstädter Echo
»A leitmotif of the hour-long piece is the game with the petrol nozzle and the long hose, in which the dancers can become entangled like the Laocoon group in their snake. At the end, the petrol gushes out and the curtain closes on a highly dangerous situation. But only the applause explodes in the inflamed audience.« – Volker Milch, Wiesbadener Kurier
»(…) Kor’sia’s petrol station intermezzo (…) certainly has what it takes to warm up younger audiences in particular for live dance in the theatre.« – Eva-Maria Magel, FAZ