HERRUMBRE

Terror and violence are as old as humanity itself. They leave behind terminally wounded creatures, on which pain was inflicted systematically and consciously. Horror, repression and the depths of human anguish could not be darker and yet are part of everyday life when they become banalities in a never ending stream of news pictures. Nacho Duato’s choreography “Herrumbre” is devoted to this topic.

With Duato’s “Herrumbre”, the Staatsballett Berlin enters aesthetically uncharted territory. This important work by Nacho Duato is as extremely modern and political. “Herrumbre” was conceived in 2004, the same year in which morning commuters in Madrid fell victim to terrorist bombings. Nacho Duato lived only a few hundred meters away from one of the four bombing locations. 2004 was also the year in which photos of tortured prisoners from the US prison camp Guantanamo went around the world.

Under these impressions, Nacho Duato decided to make the terror and the fatal as well as hopeless abyss of human pain the subjects of a new work. In his choreography, Nacho Duato relentlessly traces the pain caused by terror. With disturbing images of deepest humiliation he wants to draw the eye into the darkness, through which the tortures are only revealed more clearly. At the same time, he also regards his production as a call for the respect of human dignity.