The classic narrative ballet, no longer regarded as contemporary art? Wait and see: Kristina Paulin, in any case, is starting as house choreographer and deputy ballet director in Karlsruhe with a 45-minute dance version of Franz Kafka's Das Schloss which cleverly holds the narrative threads together despite the contemporary approach.
Okay then: K. (Daniel Rittoles) arrives in a snowy mountain village where he is to work as a surveyor on behalf of the local castle administration. The locals are reserved about the stranger from the city, in the castle one is apparently surprised by his arrival. Only when he asks for help is he given two assistants (Leonid Leontev and Philip Sergeychuk) who are admittedly no real help, and he still doesn't have a job to do. In order to solve at least the latter problem, K. tries, increasingly desperately, to reach decision-makers in the castle, but in doing so he becomes more and more entangled in bureaucracy ... Paulin arranges this story with a sure choreographic approach, sometimes with humor (e.g. when K. gets stuck on hold when calling the castle) and with a sense of eroticism personified by the waitress Frieda (Lucia Solari). Choreographically, it is more focused on the mass scenes than on individuals, which lends a very unique signature to the group choreographies with the village community: folkloristic, but at the same time stiff and joyless, characterized by the aggression of neofolk which is extensively quoted in Davidson Jaconello's composition.
