Entdecke David Pallants Profil

 

I got to know David Pallant through his writings first. It was only after corona that I saw him perform for the first time, in Mirrordrom by Porson’s Khashoggi, and was touched by the ephemeral vulnerability he portrayed. David is a collaborative dancer, a creator of dance works and a writer. He studied at the Conservatoire de Paris and Central School of Ballet in London, has a BA in Literature from the Open University and worked for Dance Theatre Heidelberg, among others, before ending up in Berlin. 
 
 “All the places I lived before Berlin were because of work. Work being the primary connection to a place always felt strange to me. I moved to Berlin to live somewhere, and try and see how work could fit into that.”

 

We meet up at Ballhaus Ost, a bit of a ramshackle place, that looks like a private house from the outside, but when you enter the garden all of a sudden a theater appears. It’s very Berlin, according to David, and it’s the first place he worked in Berlin after arriving in this city. 

 

“The work I did here on BETWEEN WORLDS (2019) with Costa Compagnie directed me to the work I’ve been doing the past years. It was very interdisciplinary, with dance, video and text, and became a watershed in my career.”

 

His relationship to text changed, not only because he became a writer on dance, but also in his performative work. Collaboration became a prerequisite, as became working with people with different expertise, within or outside of the art world. 

 

“I’ve always jumped around in many different styles and dipped my toes in many different things. For a long time I experienced that as a weakness, like I wasn’t going deep enough. But I realised it’s important to me to discover new things, especially when you are in a group of people who have access to different skills than you have. I became quite dependent on working with this plurality of viewpoints. I don’t have the technical skills of an actor, and can’t rely on my technique the way I can with movement. Using text feels far more on the edge. I have to trust my instincts more and have to be much more concentrated. The range of the unknown has become so much more unlimited. It’s exciting.”

 

As we hide from the rain and continue our conversation in one of Prenzlauer Berg’s many cafés, it’s not long before we get to talk about the working conditions of dance in Berlin, and the threat it is under. Currently, David collaborates with Antje Velsinger on the durational performance Goodbye/Farewell about saying goodbye and letting go in the context of climate change. They work in Cologne, Dortmund, Hamburg, but not Berlin. As for many dance artists, to maintain a sustainable career in Berlin is difficult to achieve, although there is a desire to work more at home.

 

“Within Germany, Berlin is a hard city for dance. The need for investments to offer security for practitioners involved on all levels is high. It has been very precarious for many people for years now, and with the cuts it is getting worse. Art has the potential to experiment with new ecosystems that will take much longer to try out in society as a whole and to highlight voices long left unheard. When even the little that is there is being taken away, it’s concerning.” 

 

The current political situation including attempts to silence support of Palestine, also within the arts, make the situation for many artists even more fragile. 

 

“It’s a strange time to be a foreigner in Germany right now - not only because of the rise of the far right, but in particular the way that Erinnerungskultur is being used to justify what is currently happening in Gaza, Palestine and the Middle East at large. I take antisemitism very seriously, not just as it relates to Nazi Germany but across Europe, and for centuries including today, but nothing can justify the horrors we are seeing. Our taxes are being used to support the destruction of hospitals and the bombing of refugee camps. The ways in which structures of power are being used to silence dissenting voices is extremely worrying, and I don’t want to stay silent.”

 

We leave, say goodbye, part our ways. Both with the excitement for Berlin in our body, both with worry about the ongoing situation and the future of free arts in this city we came to love. 

 

Veröffentlicht im April 2025. Text von Annette van Zwoll.