Sabotage

08.05.2025  –  Richard Peter – Hamelner Zeitung 

“Spotted” –“Sabotage”, a performance that embodies play, especially danced play, and a thousand metaphors. Dancing figures, almost like Beckett’s wanderers, still waiting somehow for Godot. Passing the time through movement and play. Vagabonds, clowns—or simply human beings, like those in the audience—all a little mischievous. Puppeteers. And yes—puppets, manipulated and manipulating in turn. Always the desire to pull the strings. A black cabinet—a network of strings. Two stools, cleverly connected, are pulled back and forth between a woman and a man. Piano music drifts in from an old radio, sometimes accompanied by clattering sounds and a babble of voices. Playful subversion. A dance of sabotage—playful, cunning, and full of wit. Two tricksters (Bosnickels) delight in play for its own sake. The action escalates. Then a life-sized puppet swings onto the stage—one-legged, one-eyed. New variations of the game unfold, this time with the puppet, which they make dance. Josh Haines, a performer who both shows himself off and, unaware, becomes a string-puller himself; Sara Angius, absorbed in her own world at the edge of the stage; Vittoria Franchina, whose brilliant marionette-like solo dissolves her body into waves of motion—almost manic in rhythm, adjusting her knee socks up and down. 

(…)

A captivating, playful evening of dance and metaphor—Sabotage transforms the stage into a living web of control, freedom, and poetic rebellion. 

(…) 

They present a rich vocabulary of body language. In a performance where everyone manipulates everyone else, the boundaries between actor and puppet begin to blur — and ultimately dissolve. A follow-up to the Wednesday evening performance at the theatre (TAB) revealed just how seamlessly this interplay unfolds before the audience’s eyes. And then the puppet is suddenly taken out of play — suspended by one arm in the stage space. The variety of choreographic invention is fascinating: ever-shifting entanglements, bodies that merge into amorphous masses, dissolve, and re-form. Here too, a subtle competition unfolds — a struggle to outdo, to outplay one another, even as marionettes making each other dance. One cuts the thread of life — collapsing to the floor as if lifeless. A bewildering tangle of strings follows, with Stefano Roveda unexpectedly appearing, performing as though it were the most natural thing in the world. Transitions glide seamlessly; again the stool reappears, drawn along as if by invisible will. “And, what are we playing now?” — a Beckettian echo, floating tenderly and absurdly beneath the theatrical sky.

03.11.2024  –  Anja Falgowski  –  Halle/MZ

70 Years of the Puppentheater Halle Of Puppets, Strings, and People 

“Sabotage” as a guest performance in Halle brings puppets to life and turns people into marionettes. Magnificent.
– A truly worthy event – worthy in the deepest sense of the Puppentheater’s legacy – took place last weekend as one of the final highlights celebrating the stage’s 70th anniversary. The guest performance “Sabotage” was, above all, a feast for the eyes and the senses: a wordless interplay between four performers and a puppet. Marionette-like
Strings and pulleys spanned across the stage, at times visible, at times hidden depending on the light. Suspended from them—like marionettes, like puppets—were two women, two men, and of course, a puppet: one-eyed, mouthless 

(…)

the object of everyone’s desire, even physical affection. […] At first, the performers moved more or less independently, but gradually, their limbs too became attached to strings. How this happened seemed almost magical, as the sudden connection between body and string remained invisible. Yet there they were, entangled in a web, guided by unseen forces—transformed into representations of themselves. And how they performed this transformation!
Sara Angius—who is also the choreographer of the piece—alongside Vittoria Franchina, Joshua Heines, and Stefano Roveda, are all professionally trained dancers.

(…)

Transformation 

And only such artists can achieve what makes this work such an aesthetic delight: flexibility, fluidity, a seemingly effortless grace in both movement and dance. They became—puppets! What usually happens on the small Halle stage—the barely perceptible transformation of crafted figures into human characters—occurred here in reverse.

(…)

The Puppentheater could hardly have chosen a more fitting finale for its anniversary celebrations.

LONO – The Woman Who Had Two Navels

10.07.2021 – Kerstin Hergt – Hannoverische Allgemeine

Sara Angius Dances Her Piece “The Woman Who Had Two Navels” at Eisfabrik

The dancer and choreographer Sara Angius is a guest at the Eisfabrik’s “Tanzoffensive” with her wonderfully ge piece The Woman Who Had Two Navels.

Hannover
Once upon a time, there was a young woman who had a lamp. Or was it the other way around? Sara Angius, former dancer at the Staatstheater Braunschweig and now a freelance choreographer, has created a dance-theatre work that feels like a modern fairy tale. Even the title sounds mysterious: The Woman Who Had Two Navels. A woman with two navels?

What audiences see at the beginning of Angius’s guest performance, presented within the Tanzoffensive by Commedia Futura at Hanover’s Eisfabrik, is a woman sitting on a stool at a table, topped by an old-fashioned lamp resembling a spotlight. And this lamp has a life of its own.

(…)

The solo eventually becomes a duet: the lamp awakens, begins to dance itself. At first, the protagonist encounters a fantastic being that literally illuminates dark moments, but it soon becomes intrusive and threatening.

The way dance, theatre, and puppetry are woven together is fascinating and gripping. In the end, the woman frees herself from the spirit of the lamp by cutting the cables. (…)

17.03.2025 – Peter Grubmüller – Oberösterreichische Nachrichten

(…)

The Italian dancer Sara Angius, who is also a guest lecturer at the Bruckner University in Linz, appears in an intense, delicate, life-affirming, and gripping 50-minute performance, entering into a relationship with a table lamp that soon becomes a struggle for power and control. The glowing object responds to gestures and impulses, revealing a finely choreographed dialogue between human and machine, as well as between figure theatre and dance, in a deeply touching way.

Sara Angius, who had already explored the boundaries between inner and outer worlds in her short film Incognitum, once again proves herself to be one of the discoveries of this festival. With great sensitivity and precision, she creates a poetic theatre experience that resonates long after it ends.

Out in space

27.04.2025  –  Pedro Obiera  –  WAZ

Duisburg. At what is, for now, the final premiere of the UFO series, “Out in Space”, audiences encounter a quirky dance performance—one that will delight some viewers while leaving others untouched.

The latest UFO production launches an imaginary journey into outer space inside its spherical pavilion at Ruhrorter Neumarkt. “Out in Space” is the title of this 50-minute, wordless dance performance, conceived for young audiences aged 14 and up. Younger viewers may find it challenging, as the piece demands a certain capacity for abstraction. In Sara Angius’s choreography, the UFO sphere appears to have entered a mysterious force field controlled by an unseen hand—radiating magnetic powers of attraction and repulsion.

“Out in Space” is a DOR production in Ruhrort.

(…)

Out in Space: A Demanding Creation in a Cosmic Atmosphere

The cosmic atmosphere is enhanced by Jan Harnisch’s sophisticated lighting effects and the musical accompaniment by Benedikt Ter Braak. With electronic sounds—initially uncomfortably shrill—Ter Braak creates a psychedelic soundscape, occasionally intervening live at the piano during smaller dance sequences.

The premiere audience, not particularly young itself, responded with great enthusiasm to this ambitious and demanding creation. “Out in Space” is the third and final installment of the UFO series presented by the Deutsche Oper am Rhein this season in Duisburg.

Further performances at Ruhrorter Neumarkt are scheduled for April 30 (5 p.m.) and May 3 (4 p.m.), along with several school performances.

28.04.2025  –  Ingo Hoddik  –  Rheinische Post, Duisburg

Emotions Take the Stage in Ruhrort

Quirky Dance at the Roof-and-Ready UFO Venue

DUISBURG. The UFO of the Deutsche Oper am Rhein — a small octagonal tent — sees itself as a creative space for music, dance, and encounters open to everyone. It “lands” for six months at a time outside the city centers, working with local neighborhoods as well as nearby schools and daycare centers to develop and experience new forms of music theatre. Until the summer holidays, the UFO is currently hosted at Neumarkt in the Duisburg district of Ruhrort.

It was there that the nearly hour-long dance piece “Out in Space” celebrated its sold-out and enthusiastically acclaimed world premiere. The material for this journey into the emotional worlds of young people was researched and developed by the still quite young choreographer Sara Angius, together with adolescents from Duisburg and Düsseldorf.

(…)

The result is touching and smile-inducing, sometimes even laugh-out-loud funny — an experience not to be missed, especially for those who are not already devoted ballet fans. And all the more so because the intimacy of the venue proves unbeatable.

INCOGNITUM

09.11.2023  –  Eveline Koberg  –  tanz.at

The AUDIENCE AWARD was given to “Incognitum” (Germany), created and performed by Sara Angius. A thoroughly unusual solo, rich and multilayered in depth. It is a search for the self: a journey deep into one’s own inner being, unfolding as a dialogue with that self — shaped through interaction with a puppet.

This confrontation between a human being and their dual nature, their inner and outer selves — at once concrete and ambiguously abstract — is embodied by the dancer with an almost acrobatic physicality, and with a rare openness of imagination and interpretive intensity. An experience in its own right.

WALLPAPER

22.01.2020  –  Von Ann-christin Beims  –  Hüttof Kreiszeitung.de

With the dance-theatre production “Wallpaper”, Theater Metronom opens its theatrical spring season, once again bringing an entirely new format to the small village. It is an experiment. But, as director and actor Andreas Goehrt puts it: “Theatre lives by constantly surprising audiences and trying new things — with the risk that it might not work.”

It was Goehrt who first came up with the idea and promptly set off with Karin Schroeder and Tomke Heeren to Braunschweig to see a performance and determine whether the format would suit the Metronom. “It was very interesting,” Heeren recalls — and the decision was made quickly. “Wallpaper”, a co-production by Sara Angius and LOT Theater Braunschweig, featuring dancers Antonella Albanese, Lucrezia Maimone and Stefano Roveda, will open the season on February 27 and 28. There is a special feature as well: the dancers will arrive a week earlier for their revival rehearsals. “They are freelance dancers coming back together again,” says Heeren. “That will be exciting.”

According to Goehrt, the dance scene in Germany — particularly the independent scene — is currently experiencing strong momentum. One reason, he says, is the growing professionalization of the field. “Choreographers from major institutions have begun working independently and presenting their work publicly with their own companies.” At the same time, audiences have developed a greater openness to the form. It is a format that may also attract a younger audience — something the Hütthof theatre makers are hoping for.

“Dance has always been an intriguing genre,” Goehrt explains, “but it was more closely embedded in municipal and state theatres.” The growing interest has not gone unnoticed by those responsible for Hütthof, who see it as their task to bring cultural events like this to their stage and to explore new paths — as they did, for example, during the Cultural Summer of 2009 with poetry slam events. On the other hand, there is now such an abundance of formats that choosing can be difficult, and not everything is suitable for Hütthof. Still, Heeren emphasizes: “This is not a village theatre.” Audiences are allowed to be challenged.

With “Wallpaper”, no spoken language is required. Through movement alone, the four performers present a mosaic of human emotions and impulses, showing what happens when four characters with different personalities, life experiences, goals, interests and problems suddenly have to share a confined space.