The more you work with stage, the more you understand that far from an empty space, it's full of barriers - not only Brecht's famous "4th wall", the dividing line between performer and audience. There is also the invisible barriers that exist without us knowing: financial, demographic, of time, of location, of systems. You could even say (and Artaud, for example, might) that every act of theatre is an act of violence: an attempt to organise systems, resources, and processes to flow towards a single, finely-directed point.
Because of this, often life gets in the way of theatre. For example, when you have no
resources, no access to the stage, when you can't reach a show for some
reason.
So it was that I arrived at Kiosk Festival later than expected, beset by train delays and some mild confusion of ticketing, both magnified by my own insistence on being social and wandering around the city. To make matters worse, I have forgotten both my tent pegs and my waterproof fly, meaning Saturday's rain is looming ominously, and giving me an opportunity to experiment with using sticks for tent pegs. I'm sure that will hold up.
Day 1 of Kiosk saw me catch only one show - the dance work SARX, performed in Žilina's New Synagogue, an actual reconstructed synagogue that is converted into a festival hub for the duration of the festival.
SARX
The title of SARX, a new work from Czech artist and choreographer Martin Talaga, has both ancient Greek and biblical connotations. The christian bible sees it as a site of punishment, referring to the fallible human form of the body (as opposed to the immaculate essence of 'god') and a source of some significant discussions in theology. But it is the ancient Greek definition that Talaga draws on in this work - first offered by Stoic philosopher Posidonius, and which sees 'sarx' as, in Talaga's terms, "the tangible, graspable, and disassemblable body".
The work itself opens with an absence of the body: a low rumble of a soundtrack, and the soft glow of a green light, illuminating a architectural, jungle jim-like structure centre-stage (set design Dušan Prekop, Matej Kos) - sort of looking like a bunch of painter's easels stacked together, with mirrors instead of canvases. As the dancers enter, the lights switches to red - a colour of both the body and of imminent threat - and the soundtrack (Filip Mišek) evolves into a more choral-inspired, reverent backdrop. The dancers, naked from the waist up and with blood-red, distressed short jeans (costumes: Vojtěch Bašta), base themselves in stillness and organise into an array, briefly breaking out into movement. The formations progress through various phases, becoming at times frogs twitching in an organised series, at time more bird-like. The structure itself is barely interacted with in this first phase: only later are the mirrors removed and played with by the dancers, bouncing the light around the room, as the soundtrack becomes a circling, scattering pattern of scrapes, a little like an amplified scamper of a spider or mouse. The ending culminates into a rapturous ascension - pointing (perhaps sarcastically) to the ascension of humanity out of the supposed torment of material existence.
Photo: Magdalena 'Majfi' Fiala
The result is a kind of total examination of the human as a flesh prison - filled with uncertainty regarding it's place in the world. It brings to mind Wagner's statement in the beginning of Das Kunstwerk der Zukunft (The Artwork of the Future) "As Man (sic) stands to Nature, so stands Art to Man": indeed, the mirror as reflective device acts here as a metaphor for the contemplation of the legitimacy of our unique essence. The final image, in which the dancers organise into a tableau beneath the structure - a sort of mess of limbs and fragmented reflections, recalls somehow The Raft of the Medusa, Théodore Géricault's famnous examination of the desperate, cannibalistic moments following the shipwreck of the Méduse. Recalling such an essential work lifts the stakes of SARX - out of the philosophical and into the corrupt, imperfect world of the material. The dancers here, not unlike the survivors of the Méduse, take cover in their structure with some uncertainty, as though carrying questions that constitute the entire humanity.
SARX manages this effective act of translation over a long time-span, and beyond the obvious points of eurocentrism and occupation with a certain line of western thinking, functions as a useful and coherent exploration of the body's weird and unique conception today - as both a source of limitation, and as a key site of struggle.
---
And after that, it's time to party - yet this critic is going home after a long day on the train, and an equally-long dinner-party the night before. So I drift off instead on my inflatable mattress under Žilina's most picturesque intersection, the improvised wooden pegs supporting my own flimsy protective structure, apprehensive dreams of Saturday's rain to come.
SARX
Choreography: Martin Talaga
Dramaturgy: Tomáš Procházka
Music: Filip Mišek
Light design: Karel Simek
Scenography: Dušan Prekop, Matej Kos
Costumes: Vojtěch Bašta
Performers: Markéta Pščolková, Marek Menšík, Alica Minárová, Radim Klásek
Production: Adriána Spišáková
--
Note: Current publication is done with the understanding that
colleagues and communities from Kharkiv, Mariupol, Kyiv, Lutsk, and Lviv
among others in Ukraine are currently under attack in an attempt to
erase Ukrainian culture and identity.
No artist should be forced to rehearse how to pick up the gun.
No comments:
Post a Comment