Chicago 1930

Chicago in the year 1930: The atmosphere on the streets of the »Windy City« is tense. The strict laws of Prohibition are in force leading the entertainment-hungry population to meet in the city’s speakeasies where beer and high-proof beverages flow like water and hopes and dreams are captured forever in sepia-shaded snapshots. At the same time, criminal organisations, with the Italian mafia »Cosa Nostra« in the van have a stranglehold on the city. With a suspiciously observing glance from the other side of the street or a barely moving shadow in the shady twilight of a lamppost, the feeling of lurking danger is ever present, accompanied by the pulsing rhythm of the metropolis in slow motion.

In the mid-1920s many Afro-American musicians were attracted to Chicago from New Orleans bringing New Orleans jazz to the city. From this, numerous young musicians from the white middle classes like Bix Beiderbecke, Frank Teschemacher or Bud Freeman developed their own variant of this musical style: Chicago jazz. Like no other musical genre, it reflects the sense of life among people in America in the 1930s. In »Chicago 1930« the ballet director Karl Alfred Schreiner and his dance company embark on a journey to a society in which rise and fall, tempo and rigidity as well as loyalty and treachery lie close together and the pool of blood is the ruling law of the street.