ANTI-PERFORMANCE
"... and I’m dancing" is actually an anti-performance. The audience sit in their seat but on the scene is also visible what is behind the curtain, during rehearsals, on the way, at home, in private life, within ourselves... It is hard to draw a line. Everything is between those zones, because everything is simultaneously taking place on several real and mental scenes: between the orchestra row, a special dance floor and sand spread on the stage.
Is it strange? Not really. During every performance we watch an actor playing his role, but also carrying his/her every-day experiences, ordinariness, own choices, tastes, customs, burdens and assets.
Actors – along with their privacy – build characters who influence them. There starts a process, which can be very rarely seen from the outside. Directors can at times watch this process – if they want to. Wycichowska did. Moreover, she based the whole performance on this relation. Fragments of performances created years ago become alive again: “It is Getting Dark”, “+-finity”, “The Spring Feast”, “Transss...’, “A Possessed Fiddler”... But those who had seen the performances a few years ago, would be surprised. The come-backs to the old titles constitute a new adventure, a new journey – offering enormous aesthetic pleasure to the viewer.
At times the dancers and the choreographer try to perform better, more fully, they reach the heights of art to fall after a moment and begin everything anew. Elsewhere, distance dominates, mingled with self-irony and sneer. There is a place for rebellion, fatigue, hostility. There are crazy-mirror images. Well known stories are about something entirely different, they find a new context for themselves. And what is most important – they mean themselves. It is not dance show, not an actor’s play, not even characters are the most important here (quite to the contrary: they always are in quotation marks, brackets, they end with a question mark or an exclamation mark). Scenic presence is what really matters. The audience attach their attention to those who are: those who wait, think, look, stay – almost in inaction. In this performance almost every actor has such a moment.
The symbols of dancer’s fate are not only the well-known points and a tutu (a classical dancer’s dress). These are also: ongoing casting sessions, in this profession referred to as auditions: to be accepted to a school, to a group, for a performance, to gain the viewer’s acceptance. A dancer must continuously work with his body: muscles, joints, tendons, bones. A dancer’s life is bound by skeletons, cages, handcuffs. All those topics, motifs and symbols appear on stage – they are the leading thread of the search for fulfilment, love, truth and harmony. The search in which viewers take part as well and which brings together those on stage with those in the seats.
I admire the courage with which the performance was produced. Wycichowska disassembled all her works to pieces, like Różewicz in his “Files”, and the dancers bravely looked into the eyes of each other in the presence of the viewers. It all works stronger when we consider the 30th anniversary. Such an anniversary is a good reason to a celebrate and pay tributes. Meanwhile, the Polish Dance Theatre takes a deep breath and throws itself into deep water: unknown, rough and cold. Congratulations.
Ewa Obrębowska-Piasecka, “Gazeta Wyborcza” (Poznań), June 27, 2003.
