La Danse d’Amazon review

The line-up also includes two young circus performers, Laleshka Salas Salazar and Basile Herrmann Philipe, who clamber over metal shelving units and perform aerial rope routines. The initial idea had been for them to both take jobs within Amazon and explore their experiences, but things did not quite pan out like that. Instead, Salazar and entrepreneur Sebastian Herz discuss the best way to source and sell an aerial rope on Amazon. This is woven together, by circus archivists Gisela and Dietmar Winkler, with a parallel narrative about East German polar bear trainer Ursula Böttcher.

Though Wetzel’s show is crammed with research, it sometimes feels like we’re just glimpsing the tip of it.  We learn about Amazon Web Services, its cloud computing and storage arm, which generates the majority of its profits. We learn how Amazon actively recruits from the military. We learn about the groups campaigning for better working conditions, but we also learn how workers in some fulfilment centres – many of whom are refugees – consider it a kind of family. Wetzel’s daughter even appears to critique his own Amazon buying habits.

While the show has been made in conjunction with a campaign by anti-consumerist Peng! Collective, allowing workers to pool their stories, Wetzel has not made an anti-Amazon show, but rather one designed to help its audience better understand this multi-tentacled entity, how it operates and how it influences the way we consume. With its rambling, patchwork structure, the show sends the audience down multiple fascinating rabbit holes before concluding in an endearingly whimsical manner (with costumes – of course – sourced from Amazon).