Dancing idiots

Show & Culture

Goldie is terminally ill and is renovating her house. Her joy in doing so is as infectious as it is disturbing. Her tomcat Apollo relishes her weakness and makes himself comfortable on top of her. Suddenly, Goldie’s recently lovestruck father turns up at the door with his girlfriend and finds himself at his daughter’s deathbed. At first, he believes he knows; by the end, she knows. Together with Goldie, the audience experiences, scene by scene, everything that is hard to say goodbye to: animals, forests, saunas, dancing, kayaking, childhood memories. Goldie’s room becomes a resonating chamber of life and ultimately outer space. Tanzende Idioten tells of dying and saying goodbye as the final realm of experience, and of the question: What remains? The characters are survivors on their way to the next catastrophe. What defines them is an absurd mixture of brutality and tenderness, anarchy and metaphysical instincts, the pain of existence and the joy of living. Following Verrückt nach Trost at the Grand Théâtre during the 22•23 season, Tanzende Idioten is the second original text-based work by acclaimed German director Thorsten Lensing. Drawing on motifs from the American writer Denis Johnson, and featuring Luxembourgish actor André Jung as Goldie’s father alongside Sebastian Blomberg, Ursina Lardi and Karin Neuhäuser, it creates an evening of great intensity – grotesque, philosophical, comic and deeply moving.