Cyborgs, technology, video effects, immortality, future. These are the words that I brainstormed after seeing SHIFT , a dance work by Emiliya Toncheva, on its last performance on the 13th of March, performed by herself , Anton Dimitrachkov and Ralitsa Neikova. Emiliya is a young actress, dancer and choreographer active in Sofia, whom I met during some contemporary dance classes and had the chance to know more - personally and professionally - during other dance-related events. SHIFT is her debut as a choreographer and I was eager to see it. In this article I will review this performance, whose presentation is: “ SHIFT is fueled by the mystical unpredictability of technological progress and charts one possible scenario in which humans become cyborgs and tap into the gift and curse of immortality”. Three are the dancers involved, all in skin-tight suits of different colours and similar techno patterns. The female dancers seemed to represent almost-humans, as their broader movements
On a rainy Sunday evening, the 27th November, I jumped in my car and drove towards the HRC Culinary Academy of Sofia. I was going to watch Kosta Karakashyan and Antonia Georgieva’s work Kitchen : a site specific and “immersive” performance, that “recreates the intense atmosphere and psychological tension in a professional kitchen before the food reaches our tables”. Even though I go to the theatre quite often, I realised that it rarely happened to me here in Bulgaria to attend site specific dance performances. Therefore, I was even more thrilled and curious about the upcoming event, also because I hadn’t seen a work by Kosta in a long time. I got to know him at ballet classes, here in Sofia, and had the chance to watch his dance performance The Effort Trap and his short film Waiting for colour , which deals with the persecution of gay people in Chechnya. In fact, besides working in the field of dance as a director, choreographer, dancer, and writer, he is also an LGBTQ+ activist. Once