Author: Zuzanna Berendt

If you say “I take your word for it” or “I hold you to that”, there is something physical to it, and in the latter case, even something that implies strength. Contemporary post-humanist theories argue that the material and the discursive are immanently connected. Language is a descriptive but also an inscriptive tool, bodies are complex beings, and only certain aspects of their functioning allow us to capture them linguistically. Language takes part in our perception of dance even when no words can be heard from the stage: the title provokes imaginations of the work, and the description available before the show introduces us to the context. Before the performance begins, we know the names of various parts of the human body, which may be about to start dancing.

In the three SŐT7 Festival performances selected as part of the Beyond Front@ project, movement was choreographed and so were the words.

On command

The title of the Croatian choreographer Martina Tomić’s piece consists of two words: figures, figures. But one can say that there is in fact just one word in plural: “figures”, which implies multiplicity. In five chapters (turn, walk, break, fall, end), three performers explore both the concept of “figure” as a certain discipline to which the body is subjected, and “multiplication” as an effect by doubling the dancers’ movements with the words appearing on the screen positioned in the back of the stage. These words can be perceived both as descriptions and commands, since the movement sometimes forestalls and sometimes follows them.

For me, observing the relations between text and movement was the most interesting and engaging strategy for watching Tomić’s piece. What is the power of words projected on the screen – one may ask – over a lively body? It seems that this power relies on the body-mind capacity to understand commands, to recognize its image in single words like “leg”, “head” or “arm”, and its possible actions in verbs such as “to bend”, “to stretch” or “to turn”. The dancers follow the commands directed to specific parts of their bodies, but there is a whole creative and untamed process going on, involving the body parts that are not addressed with commands and the constellations between dancers that stay outside the controlled sphere.

In my opinion, the play between words and bodies and between what can be named “literary” and “figurative” dominated the dramaturgy of the piece. Bodies were simultaneously executing the “literal” message of the words and becoming a metaphor (figuration) for them. That is, they served as a medium for transferring their meaning into the realm of physical action. Interestingly, the performance that was supposedly a cultural study of “the figure” became more of a performative game of language and movement. When the movement stops, the figure appears, and the body captured in a still frame can become the object of scrutiny, cultural marking and commodification. However, in Tomić’s performance, the bodies were constantly transitioning between different figures, leading the audience’s focus away from the figures themselves and towards the relationship between words and bodies. Hence, the figures remained slightly in the background as a result of varying tempos of movement and pauses.

Mediating timeframes

During the performance Plenir choreographed by Daša Grgič, there was no translation available for the English-speaking audience, so my Slovenian colleague whispered the meaning of words spoken and sung on stage into my ear. Of course, something was lost in translation – my colleague didn’t fully understand the Slovenian dialect and besides, in every language, part of the meaning is complemented by its sound and its historical usage.

While watching the performance, I was thinking that the iconography associated with village life during and after war – milk cans, linen clothes, wicker baskets and hay – feels familiar to me. Undeniably, the history of Europe in the 20th century, despite the different perspectives of specific countries, creates a space of common imaginarium. I quickly began to perceive the work through the lens of what I already knew: the iconography of the post-war countryside, but also the patriarchal view on the relationship between men and women, which, in my opinion, set the pattern for the plot and choreography of the performance. I do not think that the activation of this lens was solely the result of my cognitive habits. It seemed to me that Grgič, driven by the desire to commemorate the legacy of her grandmothers’ generation, does not reflect on transferring the past to the contemporary stage – a stage surrounded by people facing contemporary problems.

In Plenir, the connection between the past and present fails to produce a dialectical insight that could enhance both our understanding of history and our comprehension of the reality we now inhabit. Consequently, the performance becomes a sort of folk park where people, their behaviors and their stories are exhibited. It was clear to me that the dancers were committed to transferring their country’s cultural heritage and that they invested a lot of energy into their performance. In my perception, however, these qualities were gradually pushed aside by questions about the strategies of representation concerning the performance and its political meaning.

Many letters and a few words

When the performance begins, two dancers are sitting on an object (we don’t know what it is yet) with their faces jaded and grim. They are surrounded by a soundscape of some gathering – perhaps a family dinner, a company lunch or an evening party with friends. The sounds of conversations, clattering of cutlery against plates and laughter surround them from all sides, but they seem dissociated from the situation. They perform a few gestures that suggest boredom and frustration, but suddenly one body encounters the other and from this point, a subtle choreography of touch, contact and cooperation emerges.

Lia Ujčič’s and András Engelman’s performance Some Things Touch is based on an interplay of two human bodies and one object – a small refrigerator with many magnetic letters on it. At the beginning, our attention is drawn mostly to the dancing bodies, but later the performers involve the object in their action, which includes struggling with its weight, exploring its different features (opening and closing its doors, or flopping it down), and using it as a mediator for the bodies’ relationship. The choreography brings the unique compatibility of the performers’ bodies to the forefront – they are different and move differently, yet they are familiar with each other, knowing how to find support or draw strength from one another. Although the choreography is based on a precision in contact, it does not generate a movement of harmony. It is rather a coordination of two forces that work together, but also confront each other, testing the extent of their influence. The movement of these two bodies, conjoined for shorter and longer moments, builds the dramaturgy of the stage space, and as viewers, we can observe how the proximity of the distance between us and the dancers influences our perception.

The last image the performers create for us is the refrigerator left on the stage with the words “so close” stacked on it. We can interpret these words in at least two ways – as an affirmative statement that the dancers were so close to each other in movement, or as a rather grim diagnosis that they were so close to each other and yet nothing really happened between them. One of the most interesting aspects of Ujčič’s and Engelman’s choreography is the invitation to perceive the two bodies’ movement journey as a quality itself instead of closing it in the framework of a classical and logocentric story with two protagonists struggling to establish and nourish a bond.

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Beyond Front@: Bridging Periphery creates an environment where artistic, cultural, critical, and discursive practices can meet and create friction. This friction appears on different scales and levels – between audience members negotiating their opinions about the performances, between cultural experiences that meet on the border between the stage and the auditorium, between different artistic strategies and different sensibilities, and between performing and perceiving. Energy is the “thing” that friction creates and the “thing” that influences our bodies and minds, or rather body-minds. This text is a proposition of creating friction between performances in the Beyond Front@ selection and the reflection on how language and movement operate in choreography.

How is this text (text-archive, text-impression, text-trace) situated in relation to the worldly and bodily choreographies?

It certainly faces them from a position that is comfortable – not too close, not too far away. It rests the weight of its word/sentence/discourse-body on recognitions of which it is certain.

What kind of movement does it establish in relation to these choreographies?

Most likely it is the movement of moving away in time and space with the knowledge that its words can reach the bodies it describes.

Did the described bodies of work influence the body of this text?

Oh, not only did they influence this text. They gave it flesh.

The text was created in the framework of dance critics residency taking place in Budapest in November 2023 as part of Beyond Front@: Bridging Periphery project.