Wusch! Zak! Puf!
wie man erscheint und verschwindet (2023)
Who has not dreamt of becoming invisible? Or looking bigger and stronger? Or becoming a completely different being even?
“Wusch! Zak! Puf! Wie man erscheint und verschwindet” (how to appear and disappear) is a dance piece for children for 4 years old and above in which three green figures transform an empty stage into a landscape where they can let their dreams run wild. They bring bizarre creatures to life: There’s the zebra that doesn’t want to show itself; the peacock that tries to enchant us with its bright colours or the gentle moss giant that doesn’t quite know what shape it wants to take.
“Wusch! Zak! Puf!” is inspired by the camouflage behaviour of various animal species and tells a poetic story about self-expression and acceptance.
Premiere 26.01.2023, HochX Theater, Munich (DE)
Choreography Léonard Engel
Dance Tamara Saphir, Jemima Rose Dean & Léonard Engel
Composition Joely Ketterer
Light design & Technical direction Wolfgang Eibert
Stage design, costume design Léonard Engel
Tailoring Christin Wanke
Production Management Elsa Büsing
Duration 40 min
Images
Critics
All three dancers impress with their lively, sometimes whimsical, humorous contemporary dance movement language, bringing unusual, changing creatures to the stage. Even the young audience becomes part of a poetic journey to their own self.
Sabine Kippenberg, tanznetz.de
Engel’s play gets by without courting the audience’s favour with a clumsy plot. Trompe l’Œil, tricks and illusions provoke laughter and fascination. (…) Léonard Engel shows the children in a wonderfully simple way what analogue magic lies in good theatre work.
Rita Argauer, Münchner Feuilleton