Review from: Cirqu’ Aarau Festival, Switzerland; 17th June 2025
Jörg Müller came to prominence some 30 years ago, on his graduation from the France’s Centre National des Arts du Cirque, with ‘Mobile’, in which he swings around suspended metal chimes, striking them as he does so to create a soundscape. A ground-breaking routine, he performs it to this day, including in this festival a few days before I arrived. Müller has continued to create high quality, innovative work so I was looking forward to seeing his new creation, Ama, in the latter half of the festival, and I was not disappointed.
The setting for Ama is magical in the beautiful marble floored Stadtkirche with its high ceiling (the get-in took 12 hours as delicate lights normally suspended in the space had to be carefully dismantled). An almond shaped stage is delineated by seats on the floor, criss-crossed by a thin black cord that also rises from anchor points up to the walls and the ceiling. A white sheet is scrunched up like a giant insect cocoon, a metre from the floor and held in place by the cord. Müller, barefoot in black trousers and t-shirt, pushes the sheet around, the arrangement of the cord allowing it to be shifted about the space, before returning it to the middle. He shakes the sheet to un-scrunch it and it starts to flap. Accompanying this is the sound of the rope sliding through the stays, and the shrill sound of a storm whipping up as the sheet whips around as though to wind gusts. Pulling the cord on the floor, Müller now hoists all four corners of the sheet into the air turning it into a sail. Continuing to pull on the cord, Müller transforms the sail to a canopy, a cloud above his head, then, as he kneels, the sheet drops to float like a ghost in opposition to his movements.
Under Müller’s deft control, the simple sheet continues to shift in our mind: now a kite, next a parachute, then (to my English mind) a knotted handkerchief to protect the head from the sun. Suddenly it billows out over the heads of the audience, scraping delicately across us as it is brought back to the centre. Throughout is an ambient soundscape, the skilled work of Bertrand Wolff, that subtly complements the movement of the sheet. A final raise – right to the top of the church – and a gentle descent to the floor brings this piece to its end.
It is hard to believe that one can watch the manipulation of a sheet for twenty-five minutes without being bored, but we have been taken on a journey of the imagination watching the sheet soar, this way and that, and the performance never drags. When there seems to be so much pressure on artists to perform for an hour or so, it is a delight to have a performer who knows not to over-extend their material and a festival willing to put on and charge admission for a short piece. I am certain that the rest of the audience felt, as I did, that they had received their money’s worth.
CREDITS
Performance Jörg Müller, Bertrand Wolff Concept Jörg Müller Composition and Sound Bertrand Wolff Administration and Tour Organization Si Par Hazard – Julien Couzy
Production Compagnie Wasistdas Support and Residency Le Cratère, scène nationale d’Alès; Le temple de Monoblet
