A Quirky and Dangerous Slice of German Life

Character dance has long been one of the specialties--and glories--of German theater. But its emphasis on melding physical mannerisms into rich, quirky movement portraiture looks so archaic in the stripped-for-action world of contemporary dance that German choreographer Sasha Waltz’s 1996 social satire “Allee der Kosmonauten” (Cosmonaut Avenue) often seems a weirdly backdated narrative divertissement in the tradition of such antiques as “Die Puppenfee” from 1888.

However, don’t underestimate Waltz’s powers as a director-choreographer. Her hourlong study of life in an East Berlin housing project lulls you with its stylistic familiarity and character comedy before delivering a number of potent and sometimes downright nasty observations about other German traditions--most notably obsessive-compulsive behavior and out-of-control power trips.

At the Irvine Barclay Theatre on Tuesday, Waltz’s six dancers (none of them German) and video designer Elliot Caplan realized her vision of a sitcom world that grows dangerous--a world in which cute, perky little Laurie Young, for instance, can’t manage her hormones and so either violently smashes herself into walls or desperately tries to become the latest squeeze of the housing project’s hunky resident sociopath (Luc Dunberry).

Waltz’s style segues as expertly from character gesture to propulsive and engulfing dance as it does from the farcical to the unbearable. For example, a spirited and inventive father-and-son gymnastic tussle featuring Juan Kruz Diaz de Garaio Esnaola and Nicola Mascia suddenly becomes a savage, punishing dance-battle and then a surreal mime reconciliation: Papa standing on his head while playing the accordion and his subdued offspring embracing his legs, heartbroken and contrite.

As the mature women on view, the maternal Takako Suzuki grounds herself in domestic chores such as stuffing a shirt emblazoned with the word “Germany” into her vacuum-cleaner bag and sewing it shut. Meanwhile, the slinky Nadia Cusimano ricochets from cozy, pointless family activities to an intense duet with Dunberry that depicts sex as deadly combat.

Throughout, Caplan’s 16 television screens (arranged in three banks across and above the stage) show us the material goods the housing project residents have collected: all the books and carpets and clocks and candles and lamps and photos and pets that define everyone we meet on this gray, empty stage. So when some of the dancers take turns playing human bookshelves while the others frantically rearrange six or seven featureless blocks (symbols of all that stuff), we recognize how people are owned by possessions on Cosmonaut Avenue. And pay the price.

Indeed, things not only take over people’s lives here, they have a life of their own, as when the family’s coffee table walks away on human legs and then rises up, sprouting a head and arms, to become a kind of prophetic presence in the apartment.

But, of course, Waltz is the true prophet in this ruthlessly acquisitive and manipulative environment, tweaking reality until it stings and making John F. Kennedy’s famous 1963 declaration, “Ich bin ein Berliner” true for all of us in a way that Kennedy never could have anticipated or desired.