amourire - to love, to die, to smile
a masterpiece full of magic and beauty
Oltener Tagblatt
The wordplay “Amour – Mourir – Rire” gains wisdom in the remaining smile.
Schaffhauser Nachrichten
as rich as life can be
Thurgauer Zeitung
Amourire is a poetic dance theater, a passage through time, in which loving, dieing and smiling (translated from French amour, mourire and rire) converge to a dense experience. Amourire emenates from the miracle of life and the question of how we deal with aging and dieing. Elfi Schaefer-Schafroth represents, reminds and anticipates different stages of life: she becomes a child, teenager, adult, and old woman. She travels through time without being able to escape its reach, but looking back with a smile on her lips.
Press Quotes to amourire
The audience witnessed a masterpiece full of magic, beauty and extraordinary dancing. Ms. Schaefer-Schafroth and her team succeeded in putting on a dance play of profound depth, filling an enthusiastic audience with awe.
Oltener Tagblatt
Director Jochen Heinrich and his team produced the stage-effective project Amourire. In her dancing, Elfi Schaefer-Schafroth reflected on themes like life, death, loss, bereavement, anger, decrepitude and biographical milestones. Her wealth of internalized dance styles create a series of body pictures in motion reminding of performances of exquisite elegance. Tap dance enriched the elements of modern dance. Pictures faded away on a hip-hop sequence. Pantomime underlined the ironic and playful eye contact with which she embraced the audience.
An interplay of colors, music, room layout and video elements complement the play with a few effectively used props including a dancing lambada puppet. The costumes were just as inspiring: In “Corpus Christi” an organza chasuble and ruff transformed the movement style through classical antique perception. One of the best parts was a dramatical dance of liberation, in which bars restricting movement cease to play the role of a cage. What remains is a smile in which the wordplay “Amour – Mourir – Rire” gains its wisdom.
Schaffhauser Nachrichten
Behind this lonely path of life on stage stands a big creative team. Fittingly, the source of the project was the multitude of experiences of all the participants, merged together skillfully by director Jochen Heinrich. … She easily combines various styles such as tap dance or hiphop with modern dance and pantomime segments. Thereby the multifaceted aspects of life become tangible by the dancer’s strong stage presence.
Neue Zuercher Zeitung
… the straight-forward, abstract, emblematic dance forms are enriched by natural movements of every day life and sport. The pantomimic body language becomes evident and provides room for dance show elements.
Tanz der Dinge
The music of Beat Escher and Daniel Mouthon, rich in associations, together with the projected videos of Martin Schaefer, provide a gorgeous artistic backdrop to the theme and dance movements. … She walks and walks, and with it evolves a rhythm pushing her forward, a rhythm that finds its pulse also in the harmoniously selected music. Her rolling, acrobatic body moves through various phases of life with apparent ease. Like short films, images of childhood, adolescence, adulthood and old age appear before our eyes …
Der Landbote
Elfi Schaefer-Schafroth’s team takes great care in matching visual and acoustic details. In this way the abstract, emblematic dance forms are clearly developed and natural movements from every day life and physical activity are astutely used, the pantomimic gestures are comprehensible and even performance dance fits in.
Ursula Pellaton; Der Landbote, Tanz der Dinge, Tanz und Gymnastik
Moments of thrilling tension take turns with relaxing moments, intermingled with flashes of eroticism and a good sense of humor. … The associations triggered by the great music by Beat Escher and Daniel Mouthon blend well with the dance elements while Martin Schaefer’s suggestive video sequences provide a phantasmagoric background. … Elfi Schaefer-Schafroth’s dance solo Amourire on the feasibility of life is as rich as life can be, and well worth seeing.”
Thurgauer Zeitung