Walk the Walk

Walking can define a space, carry semantics and expectations, and is not without reason a historically favourite theme of comedians on stage, film and TV, ranging from understatement to slapstick. “Walking is a means of forward movement for those organic beings with voluntary movement and feet”, it says in the Brockhaus Encyclopaedia from 1837. Only later thanks to the invention of photography and film were scientists able to visualise and understand the complexity of the movements and juxtapositions of balance involved. Inspired by the experimental settings and documentation of early movement researchers, Simon Steen-Andersen sets out to deconstruct – in collaboration with the Swiss percussion quartet Ensemble This | Ensemble That – the phenomenon of walking as theatrical and musical material in a virtuosic game of causality and stage mechanics.