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 © Lutz Knospe / Ute Langkafel

Krampus: Pelz und Puderzucker

by

 

with

 

 

 

Stage

Choreography

Costume

Music

Dramaturgy

Isabella Sedlak & Ensemble

 

Maryam Abu Khaled

Yanina Ceron

Anastasia Gubareva

Orit Nahmias

Vidina Popov

Christine Ruynat

Therese Nuebling

Franziska Mueller

Cansu Tanrikulu, Korhan Erel

Sandra Wolf

Every year in December, demonic spirits costumed in fur coats, carved masks and devil horns appear around the alpine region with rattling chains to drive out the evil from the alpine scenery dusted with icing sugar. Krampus appears in a wide variety of forms: as a traditional mask, as St. Nicholas' companion who punishes children, and sometimes as a chocolate figurine with a broad, devilish grin. Isabella Sedlak and the ensemble take on this oft-mythologised custom inscribed deep into alpine society. By exposing traditions of disciplining and whirling together dualist concepts of good and evil, they choreograph a change in perspective to unmask social structures full of repressed emotions and concealed chasms.

"There is hope that the identity debate will not be quite so bitter and polarized in the future. (...)  at the Gorki Theater in Berlin is now running  the piece Krampus – Pelz und Pulverzucker about the alpine custom that demonic figures with creepy masks, rattling chains and devil horns scare people, especially children and women. Traditionally, the Krampus is mimed by men. At the Gorki, women play him, one is black, none of them has a German-sounding name. Perhaps at some point we will no longer ask ourselves how the Krampus was "really" - but see traditions for what they are: played. A re-enactment of events that no one knows how exactly and whether they happened at all."

Susanne Kaiser in Zeit Online

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