This year we are celebrating the 20th anniversary of fall of the Berlin Wall. The basic idea for the “Berlin Wall Project", which consists of a concert dance work “Wallstories”, a site specific dance “Dancing with the Berlin Wall” and a short dance film entitled “The Wall” is to reflect upon what the Wall and its removal meant to the Western world in its broadest sense. We forget this now but the Cold War constantly threatened to turn into a devastating atomic war. No place captured this reality more than Berlin, Germany – a divided city on the forefront of the battle between East and West.
(Text from www.berlinwallproject.com; quoted from Nejla Yatkin) In the mid eighties, as a teenager in Berlin, I personally felt the threat of imminent conflict. This concern was an ever-present issue in conversations, meetings and demonstrations. This concern was also physically manifest in the form of the Wall, which both separated as well as divided East and West. Initially, as a child, you were always aware of it as it demarcated freedom from autocracy. Later, one simply learned to navigate around it.