Waking up at STANICA seems never easy.
This year's Kiosk festival was, unlike last year, not plagued by rain - although it was as much an omnipresent threat as the overpass that dominates the tent-laden field at the back of the cultural centre.
Last night was the usual kick-ass local DJs, led by DJ TRANSmisia who
played a stirling set and led revellers through a wide range of
re-mastered and almost unrecognisable queer-influenced pop tunes from
the 90s, from the Backstreet Boys to Aqua. I wake up still feeling like I
haven't recovered from the train ride, (and D'Epog's bulldozing Handsfree certainly didn't help) and wondering if I even will before disappearing back to Berlin tomorrow.
The final day of Kiosk is a few shows with a quiet resonance to them - the perfect way to end the festival, together with some public discussion with Festival Directors Michaela Pastekova and Martin Krištof. Congratulations on another hearty Kiosk!
Medař
Walking into the stage of Medař - a work from Czech puppetry group FRAS - is walking into a familiar magical world of puppetry. In a world that flattens everything out into the same categorizable screen-surfaces, puppetry is refreshingly 3-dimensional in its approach: we can zoom, slide, transform, and destroy using only our imaginations. The scope for puppetry is limited only by our capacity to give in to its illusions, which are never forced on us, but remain a strong and beautiful invitation to discover once again a love of life.
Photo: Mariia Hryhorenko
That invitation is dripping with pleasure in Medař - its recycled materials, soft lighting, and painstakingly-decorated red temple proudly framing the action of the microscopic drama. Paper dangles from the structure, as the puppeteers draw from their toolkit of instruments to slowly agitate the world into life - marked by an ingenious use of a map drawn onto an old piece of corregated iron, also used as a type of rusty backgdrop to the play.
The narrative itself follows a Nepalese man Joshi whose sister falls ill, and who has to go and fetch a special medicine from a mountain-top. The gongs and chimes of the atmospheric soundtrack (credited as FRAS) slip shapes and transform as flexibly as the stage itself, moving through a list of imaginative concepts, lovingly-designed to delight. There are various set-pieces - sort of dead-end jokes - that mark the narrative, such as repeated dousing of a candle, or flies leaving only to return, moments which perhaps make up the true diversionary delight of the work.
Photo: Mariia Hryhorenko
It's a beautiful invitation to remember the magic of puppetry, and how it forms the basis for so much of human imagination - as was seen by the wondering faces of the audience during the mandatory post-play examination of the puppets, including one made out of a candle itself.
Dear Shelter
"Presence" is a concept increasingly defining contemporary dance, as it attempts to incorporate new conceptions of the human relationship with environment into existing discourses of phenomenology that centre human experience. The results are often a deep contemplation into our relationship with "things", including the body as a mediator between the self and the world. The best of these works don't aspire to any answers, and are rather driven by deep curiousity for exploring the boundaries of inside and outside.
Photo: Marek Jančúch
Dear Shelter is a live composition that builds a premise based on separation of the self from itself or the world. Developing a dialgoue in real-time in front of the audience, the three artists (Dance and text Robie Legros, music Amund Roe, light: Matthieu Legros) gradually layer interactions, beginning with Roe on an old Würlitzer piano (still sitting on its moving-trolly), later adding interventions from Robie Legros on lights. The piece creates a delicate, free interaction that utilises the stunning natural and constructed architectures of the New Synagogu - daylight streaming in the windows does more than a lamp ever could - and dances with poles, paper, and pen that seem almost holistic.
As the artists find a path together through the work (including instruments such as a tube blown into water), a picture emerges of a stage that focuses on balance harmony between object and self, a space of offers and receiption, almost meditative, and eventually sliding into its gentle end, as the Würlitzer slowly winds down into silence.
Photo: Marek Jančúch
And so with that, your correspondent checks out of yet another Kiosk. It feels like this festival has the balance right - making use of its unique location, a careful-but-not-too-careful curation always generating surprises, and drawing on the energy of the social atmosphere. This year, I wasn't able to participate fully, as my belated writing attests (the festival finished more than a month ago, and I've been safely back in Berlin watering the plants since then). But even the small dose I got revealed the usual Kiosk vibe stands strong, perhaps one of the few informal bastions of performance that has shown resiliance against the COVID-19 pandemic. Not without a lot of work, I'll bet.
Watching D'Epog's "Handsfree". Photo: Marek Jančúch
Medař
Directed by Johana Bártová
Set design, puppets: Jakub Šulík
Music by FRAS
Starring: Matěj Šumbera, Jakub Šulík
Dear Shelter
Dance, text by Robie Legros
Music: Amund Roe
Light: Matthieu Legros
Production: Martina Čeretková, Šimon Koleček
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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.
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