TUNE BACK (time)
This fall in Leipzig and Dresden, Germany, six performers move through loops, glitches, and half remembered images, tracing the body's back as the site where memory lives.
What if memory could be choreographed: walked into, backwards, one step behind you at all times?
That's the proposition at the centre of TUNE BACK (time), the new work from go plastic company, premiering this September at LOFFT – DAS THEATER in Leipzig before moving to HELLERAU in Dresden. Directed by Cindy Hammer and Susan Schubert, the piece follows six performers through a landscape built from loops, glitches, and half-remembered sound and image, cycling through play, stop, and rewind.
The company's own framing leans hard into the body's most overlooked orientation: the back. It functions as the piece's structural logic, the part of us that is always facing what has already happened, moving through the choreography as a kind of throughline that draws attention to what lies behind us. It offers a fresh take on how dance usually treats memory, which tends to arrive front facing and presentational. Here, it trails, stays peripheral, remains only half in view, which tracks with how memory actually behaves.
The choice grew out of research the company began in early 2025, exploring how attention shifts to what lies ahead or behind, depending on the path already taken. That inquiry led toward nostalgia, and eventually to the back of the body as the piece's central image. As Hammer and Schubert put it, they wanted to explore longing and the bittersweetness of memory without relying on facial expression at all.
That constraint shaped the rehearsal process as much as the concept. Physically "rewinding" movement became one of the company's central challenges, with precision demands increasing across weeks of rehearsal. At a certain point, the company moved away from the idea of rewinding altogether and toward something closer to re-entry: placing oneself back into a state, physical and emotional, rather than simply reversing through it. Rewinding, they found, always implies a kind of skipping. Re-entering does not.
If the work delivers on its premise, audiences may find themselves watching memory as orientation rather than narrative, something felt in the body's position rather than told through a story.
World Premiere: September 4-6, 2026 — LOFFT – DAS THEATER, Leipzig Further performances: November 27–28, 2026 — HELLERAU, Dresden
Duration: approx. 50–60 minutes
Recommended age: 12+
Dance / Co-Choreography: Kevin Albancando, Kirill Berezovski, Suzette Sagisi, Momo F. Tanner, Rika Yotsumoto Artistic Direction: Cindy Hammer, Susan Schubert Music / Performance: David Le Thai Costumes / Setting: Lydia Kluge Light / Video & Set Design: Martin Mulik Technical Direction: Benjamin Henrichs Artwork / CI: Stephan Tautz PR: Thomas Natzschka
A production of go plastic company, in co-production with HELLERAU – European Centre for the Arts and LOFFT – DAS THEATER. Funded by the City of Dresden and the Cultural Foundation of the Free State of Saxony.
Find go plastic company on Instagram.
