They way they walk upside-down is more graceful than my right side up walking. With elegant poise they hover above the audience. They slide headfirst down fabric and ropes, heads landing inches from the stage. They twirl in hoops and defy gravity on swings. The male dancers answer them climbing up poles and bounding over one another's shoulders. A story of first love, of those butterflies in the stomach and laughter in the air; a story of love that is broken, intense yet insatiable; and finally a story of finding the love that fits like a glove. The dance production Versus, at the Chamaleon Theatre in Berlin's trendy Mitte quarter is gravity-defying magic.
We eat sausages, potatoes and sauerkraut for dinner before the show.
The next day we get inside the dirty grungy city that is Berlin. The art squat which is at once covered with murals, surrounded by sculptures, filled with living artists and also has a stench of stale urine from the vagabonds who use it as a toilet. The street art, a recent fascination of mine after the stunning works of El nino de las Pinturas in Granada. In Berlin you could say that the walls talk. In a city where only two decades ago a wall divided the capitalist west and the communist east, today the walls tell a different story. A painting by one artist is answered by another. Art on the walls change a neighbourhood. The building of one hundred faces brings hope to a community. The number 6 is found on pavements, a rock here or there, Banksy makes an appearance with his spaceman and meanwhile how will little lucy kill her cat?
Berlin when I think of you I picture chewed back nails, leg warmers and a recycled beanie… confident but not cocky, grey but not miserable, we but scratched at the surface.
loved this description xx
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