Dancing mania: Paris 1913

Rhythm is life, is in us as breath, pulse and heartbeat, wants to express itself with excess energy and pulls us towards intoxicating movements. The theme day in Sanssouci spans 500 years of dancing to the point of frenzy until midnight - , with concerts, readings, workshops, dance performances and open dance. Eventually, there is only one thing that can help against »Dancing mania«: to dance!

»The man must be completely insane«: this was conductor Pierre Motteux's first thought when Igor Stravinsky played him and Sergei Djagilev, the manager of the legendary »Ballet russes«, his »Pictures from Pagan Russia«, for the first time. The new ballet becomes a scandal, the audience goes crazy under the archaic force of these sounds and dances. »Barbaric music with all the comforts of modernity« is how Claude Debussy sums it up. Volker Hagedorn's book »Flammen. Eine europäische Musikerzählung 1900 - 1918« sweeps you into the maelstrom of the musical revolutions on the eve of the First World War and an unleashed piano duo makes the keys glow in Stravinsky's rhythmic furor.