Telling tale of tents and despair

~ Return to Sender - a modern dance performance by Helene Waldmann at Water’s Edge on September 10.

“Every time we are standing here, again and again. Assorted. Piled up. Arranged in a line.” “At each border, I am a passport picture, which belongs to nowhere.” These were some of the statements heard at the performance of Helene Waldmann’s Ensemble of Modern Dance called “Return to Sender”. The performers and technicians were flown to Colombo to celebrate 50 years of German culture in Sri Lanka.

It was a most unusual dance experience, especially when the dancers couldn’t be seen. At the very start, a “visual overture” of picture-postcards showing views of tourist attractions from well known cities was projected in a sequence. What was out of place in each picture was a coloured tent. Like an uninvited guest, the tent stood spoiling the picturesque well known cityscapes of London, Paris, Venice, Madrid or of Munich.

In the dim light, the tents on the stage begin to move slowly -obviously there was somebody inside. Bad lighting. No music. Or… has something gone wrong? One hears only the sound of wind blowing, like a soft hum, never-ending and monotonous. Further disappointment: The music did not reflect the rich tradition of German music in any way. What does this type of oriental music have to do with Germany?

Finally, the six tents stand up in a line. Through each of the rectangular openings of the shapeless tent, a most beautiful face was seen. Each framed face was lit by a rectangular light that made the staring faces look like passport photographs. A voice was heard: “Where do you come from?”

A question familiar to anyone who has been living in Europe, whose face doesn’t merge into the cityscape. “You are going back to your home, aren’t you?” would be the next polite question – Helene Waldmann has left out this most obvious second question.

The temporariness of makeshift life in a tent is all we see on stage. In the course of the evening, the tent becomes a metaphor for those who have left their “home” in search of security or a better life. The tents begin to move, skip, jump, tumble and fly. Enmeshed in each tent is a soul in desperation, joy, and fear. Strong hands now emerge out of each tent. They reach out for each other, fight with each other, grab for the same thing, and comfort each other too.

“To your eyes, we look the same. We’re behaving according to our own rules. Controlling each other to keep us safe.” “Perhaps you ask yourself how can we move? How can we breathe? How can we sing? “We start to create everything from the beginning, again and again and again.

“We invent how to move, how to sing, how to dance. But some times this is very tiring and we lose control”. Was the Goethe Institute offloading the problems of some Muslim migrants in Germany under the dimmed chandeliers of the Waters Edge”?

Each section of dance is paused with a video projection. Mini texts known to us, always signalling a disappointment experienced when receiving a letter or a parcel like “Undelivered”, “Damaged”, “Parcel opened”, “Contents missing” in all European languages and in Arabic, parade from right to left and left to right on the screen. I was later informed that Helena Waldman, had been collecting these messages from Post and Telecommunication Departments in Europe and Iran.

Each emigrant’s link with “home”, the parcel, the letter, the telegram on an uncertain journey is not received as expected, at times when home has no fixed addresses. The displacement of the displaced. The link with the Heimat – Homeland is disrupted due to surveillance by the authorities and corruption of the custom officers. The shame and pain of seeing that a personal gift has been opened, its contents scrutinized or an intimate letter written by a loved one has been read aloud flashes in the mind. The anxiety of not being able to receive a gift from a loved one far away fades out from the screen.

Dim lights come on. The tents on stage keep appearing, negotiating at times. Is this only the problem of modern Germany having given asylum to refugees from all over the world?Black and white photographs of kids appear on the screen. The background is an urban landscape of housing blocks piled up on each other. A random selection of photographs taken at family reunions, weddings, birthdays or when on holiday, each showing the past, when the family was ‘intact’ back in the good old days. Then, these photographs keep fading in and fading out.

Finally, the anonymous cityscape dominates the screen like a giant collage. The same prefabricated blocks housing families making up that living space which we all identify as our home. This ‘home’ is hidden somewhere in the noise of traffic and concrete jungle.

The names of this city are interchangeable - Teheran, Kabul, Karachi, Chennai, Mumbai, Dhaka or Colombo. Judging by the large queues in front of High Commissions and Embassies in Colombo, and the foreign exchange earned by our migrant workers that gives the life blood to our economy, Sri Lanka too will have to deal with the problems of migration more sensitively. It is also clear that the problems of living in the Diaspora are not just the problems of a few. One may ask the question, to what extent do our Sri Lankans feel safe and welcome, when exposed to foreign bureaucracy, strange working ethics and attitudes. Not forgetting the fact, that all those who seek a safe space to live in, called by different names like “Asylum seekers”, “Refugees” and “Displaced people” have to face the same discrimination “Living in the Diaspora” with the migrant workers.

The fact of being a ‘tent’ - a stranger away from home, is one of the most powerful themes since the end of the Cold War. Borders opening out, ethnic wars, religious intolerance and disregard for basic human rights are some of the parameters that may define this era pushing the unfortunate into the periphery in the Tent.

Coping as a migrant in a strange city and not knowing when ‘home’ is a safe place to return to, become themes of the performance. The Goethe Institute which has brought reputed dance ensembles like those of Susanna Link, Pina Bausch and Sascha Walz or the “Tanzforum” of Cologne, have after 50 years now dared into a new field – making a political statement with a troupe of women migrants living in Berlin. In spite of being banned in some cities in our region, the narratives from Tentland was well received in Colombo.

Narratives from our Tent lands are seldom heard, those whom we call IDPs – “Internally Displaced People” are never heard in the media. Some tents have disappeared; some chosen ones from tents will be given a chance to meet the Minister and greet the visiting politician carrying kids and patting shoulders.

Only on such occasions will the faces of our “Tent people” appear in the media, only to be forgotten. But even if their voices will be kept silent, they too will find their own mechanisms of coping with corruption and arrogance of the bureaucrats and other local and foreign authorities in whose hands their day-to-day life depend.

War, tsunami, or fight against terrorism has bequeathed us too with the global phenomenon of “Tents”. “Where have all the tents gone?” Maybe the answer is blowing in the wind - somewhere caught up in the arid dunes of the Eastern Coast or in some unvisited village in the North.