“Dessau Dancers” – Hip-Hop as folk art – Frankfurter Rundschau

April 16, 2015

Dance Scene from “Dessau Dancers”. Photo: AP

The film “Dessau Dancers” by Jan Martin Scharf tells of trying to fit into the breakdance DDR system. As you can imagine, this was not easy.

Only shows Thomas Gottschalk in his mission “Well something like that!” A dancer Frank’s father lets bang on the television. The man moves so strangely moved, but that must be the image. Then Frank feels himself in the cinema revival. He sees the film “Beat Street”, created in 1984 in the US, a year later arrived even in the GDR. What acted in detail, know today, thirty years later, hardly anyone. But with its focus on the hip-hop he pulled something from the old Europe, even behind the “Iron Curtain”. The moves of the break dancer from the Bronx act in the theater until Frank’s well-trained joints.

The feature film “Dessau Dancers” tells the story of revival and its consequences, according to bias based on fictitious persons. However, the screenwriter Ruth Thoma has been guided by real models. In fact, the breakdance reached at that time among teenagers with urge to move around. The East German state but saw the accumulation of more than two people on the street skeptical, pointing any kind of “assembly” as a threat. According to the blues shows in churches and young people with swords-to-plowshares-patches the next group of malcontents seemed to roll

. “Acrobatic show dancer”

This indicates the film by Jan Martin Scharf in however much too clumsy geratenen images. To channel anger and arrogance, cultural officials at that time had the idea to make the breakdancers “acrobatic show dancer”, requiring them to be classified as folk artists and to acquaint them with an identity card, the so-called “artists cardboard” heel.

From left: Gordon Chamberlain as Frank Satzke, Oliver Konietzny as Alex and Sebastian hunters Michel. Photo: AP

The film tells the story through the means of comedy. So city officials, Party superiors, police and Stasi therefore come as figures of fun, played some of Wolfgang Stumph. For modern atmosphere only three piefige scene images were found: a dirty place in the industrial area, a gammlige old building street corner and a newly built block in which each window hangs a GDR flag. Between them several times running around with a group of Young Pioneers scarf and white blouses “Be ready!” To her hands – stretch greeting. And the micro version of the famous “Boiler Entertainment” on East German television acts to piefig that you have to fremdschämen.

where Jan Martin Scharf has quite a story to tell. And whenever he was on Frank and his friends – two boys and a girl – focus, the film shows character as a portrait of youth. The “Breakbeaters” jostle in two directions. They are grateful to travel with their favorite pastime, dancing, through the little country and can occur in the youth clubs to enthusiastic audiences. But they did indeed break out of the prescribed paths, but stuck with their artists cardboard in a corset. You see used. Those who stayed breakdance according to the road, they laugh now.

The young actors feel a on in the 16- to 20-year-old at the time, in their desire good their music, longing for Western clothes in the conflicts with the parent generation and the scramble of Frank and his best friend about the one girl in the group. And last but not least, there are all sorts of perfectly executed moves to see great breakdance.

Dessau Dancers. D 2015 Director: Jan Martin Scharf. 90 minutes.