At first glance, things don’t look so bad: for the first time, women are at the top of the foreign and interior ministries, the EU Commission, the International Monetary Fund, and soon also the Federal Employment Agency and the trade union federation. At second glance, disillusionment sets in: Belén Garijo, CEO of the pharmaceutical company Merck, is alone in the DAX; less than 15 percent of German corporate board positions are held by women, and the culture is still dominated by men. On the other hand, care work is almost entirely done by women, which promptly led to a gender backlash during the lockdown. An intellectual emancipation pioneer like Simone de Beauvoir has disappeared so far from sight that she has to be rediscovered – soon with a show at the Bundeskunsthalle in Bonn.
There, in the capital of the old Federal Republic of Germany, lived until 1992 a woman whose name means nothing to twenty-year-olds. Although Petra Kelly was a beacon of hope, a figurehead for the Greens. Twenty years ago she was shot dead in her sleep by her partner Gert Bastian. At the theater in Zwickau a revenant of Kelly’s is now on stage – side by side with two other women who are an integral part of the history of the 20th century: Marie Curie, first Nobel Prize winner for chemistry, and Romy Schneider – profession: film actress. A thoroughly auratic creature that has always fascinated the choreographer Annett Göhre. Göhre has set out to portray the trio of science, culture and politics with the means of dance – a very ambitious undertaking.
Three square boxes emerge from the darkness. In the middle chamber, a woman blinks at mirrored walls. She wears red trousers, a black top, a fashionably self-confident outfit. Despite this, she seems insecure and lonely. Seconds later, slits in the wall open, greedy hands push in. Not two or three, but eight, nine, ten. They cast shadows, duplicate themselves in the mirrors, slither and tongue at the woman who wants to crawl away like a defenseless animal. But there is no place, no place that importunity does not reach. So the beleaguered woman rushes out of the box and rushes to the ramp, where a ball beauty in an ivory-colored robe is posing: courtly position, elegantly spread arms, rigid body template. The attempt to get rid of the little princess fails. Even a kick doesn’t bring the art being down. It remains overpowering, superhuman, immortal. Unkillable.
And yet there is also a little lightness, high spirits thanks to jazz and swing. Until the last shot is fired
Romy Schneider’s lifelong drama – her “Sissi” mortgage – cannot be illustrated more eloquently. In fact, Annett Göhre and her dance company of only ten, based at the theaters in Plauen and Zwickau, succeed with “Marie! Romy! Petra!” an extremely clever and aesthetically well-formed evening. A homage to three strong women with a penchant for self-destruction: as a result of nagging curiosity (Curie), inner conflict between aspiration and reality, mania and depression (manifest with Schneider and Kelly). It is the female ambivalence that Göhre knows how to draw grippingly – as a balancing act between private and public figures. Romy Schneider, for example, who tried to shed the “Sissi” image, shot with the most prominent film directors in France – and yet misfortune seemed to have leased it: in the liaison with Alain Delon, the suicide of her husband Harry Meyen, the accidental death of their son . It all played out in front of paparazzi lenses, grabbing headlines and causing the actress to drown her sorrows in booze. The anger that flared up in some of her interviews became the leitmotif in Göhre’s production. It is exactly the opposite with Petra Kelly.
Fragments of history, captured on three small screens high up in the stage portal: Vietnam, Woodstock, flower power, RAF terror, squatters and “nuclear power – no thanks!” demos. Below, a young woman spins in front of her, a driven woman with quicksilver body language. Only the index finger pops up at regular intervals – “Attention, important message!” Her cell is on the far right and is covered with hundreds of posters. Everyone makes an announcement, a statement. As soon as other people appear, the encounter is like a showdown. And yet there is also a little lightness, high spirits thanks to jazz and swing. Until the last shot that rips Petra Kelly out of life. What remains?
The peace and human rights activist Petra Kelly was the Greta Thunberg of the 1980s: a strenuous role model, constantly furious and inspired by missionary zeal. Kelly embodied the alternative to the green Tuscany faction of Joschka Fischer. Anyone who remembers how her dark circles got deeper year by year and how the moments of her isolation got bigger looks spellbound at Annett Göhre’s Kelly portrait. How about this female triumvirate, in which even Marie Curie, who is far removed in time, shines. The researcher who gave the name to radioactivity and let it eat her away. True to the maxim: progress demands sacrifices.
Annett Göhre draws no victims, no martyrs. But women who boldly throw themselves into life – with a musical tailwind from Nina Simone to Maria Callas. “Marie! Romy! Petra!” is Göhres Dernière in Zwickau and Plauen. At the end of the season she has to leave the house. It comes: a man.