The Merry-Go-Round

Inviting, brisk, grinning, playing music and dancing grotesquely, this is how Death is shown as a skeleton in the medieval Danse Macabre. Opposite of him – the human being: wondering, hesitating, persisting in a gesture. Many variations of the Danse Macabre have since formed the artistic examination of human beings with Death, but in the end all concepts mirror the inconceivability of the moment: our own meeting with Death.

Artists from different genres, cultures and generations are sharing their conceptions, fears and strategies to live with certainty of death. In a merry-go-round of pictures, movements, words and sounds, this same recurrent moment is played through in different modes: “mysterious”, “maestoso”, “in soft tones”, “melancholy”, “excited, frivolous, swinging” are the performing instructions.

And … in the end we can witness an immortality: bawdy Punch and longing-to-die Pierrot show us, how Death can be outwited.