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4 maltatoday | SUNDAY • 7 OCTOBER 2018 THIS WEEK DANCE TEODOR RELJIC speaks to dance choreographer Irina Pauls ahead of the upcoming production It's Schiller!, which adapts fragments of Schiller's Der Maltheser – a historical drama dealing with the Great Siege What led you to adapt Schiller's Der Maltheser into a dance performance? Why did you feel that the piece was conducive to a dance-based treatment? The interest and the inspiration came directly from Malta. I am a frequent visitor of the island, and I really love the place and its colourful history. In 2012 I could realise a dance performance in coproduction with German and Mal- tese dancers at St George Square in Valletta. Once Valletta was selected to become the European Capital of Cul- ture for 2018, I wanted to latch onto that momentum and pin down a theme that is strongly connected to the island and its history. And what could be more fitting for this purpose than the fragments of a work by a great German writer, directly inspired by the Great Siege of Malta in 1565? I personally think that a knowl- edge of history is fundamental towards coming to terms with our contempo- rary presence. As a choreographer I am mostly in- volved in the field of Dance-Theatre. The performances as a whole are formed from 'broken bits', with dance being opened up to all possible move- ments of the human body; from music to singing, to texts and vocal contribu- tions. The constant filing, dropping, adding and revaluing of the thoughts in the text by Friedrich Schiller in his Maltheser fragments allows me as a di- rector the continuation of this practice in the dance performance, it challenges this art form outright. A link to the present day is given by contemporary aesthetics of the project. The fragments are not smoothed into a linear story, but scenic presentations make up a whole and reflect Schiller's startlingly intense preoccupation with the subject and the role of the Grand- master. Beyond the obvious tenors of its narrative, how important would you say Maltese heritage and history were to your crafting of this piece? This was very important for me. To come to the point where I am able to say: 'I am creating a dance performance and the content will be...' Until I got to that point, however, it was all a matter of intensive research into various sub- jects: the history of Malta, the Order of St John, the biography of Friedrich Schiller and the main art forms of the 16th century – from architecture to painting and music. Could you tell us something about the musical compositions at the centre of the production? How did you set out to balance the historical nature of the narrative vs a contemporary feel in the music, and how did this impact your choreography work in particular? Friedrich Schiller believed the chorus on stage serves as a moral compass. For this reason, we will have on stage the world-class a capella singers 'am- arcord'. For the music to It's Schiller!, I worked with the composer Matthias Engelke. We wanted to find a balance between contemporary electronic mu- sic and songs in the Christian music tradition. This hap- pens to be the pre- cise area of expertise of the vocal ensem- ble amarcord. To this end, the songs that were composed between the 11th and 16th centuries were set into the context of music created with modern production means such as syn- thesizers, samplers, and effects, arranged and played by a com- puter. The blend be- tween the voices and the electronics is be- ing mixed during the performance. Besides the historical songs, the composer integrated sounds and au- dio fragments into the electronic composition with the aim of enabling Teodor Reljic Dancing at the heart of the Siege