In these posts I will tell you how I experienced Antistatic Festival 2022 and share some impressions and thoughts of the events I followed. To help myself with being concise and creative, I decided to choose for each performance three words that are representative of the work: a noun, an adjective and a verb.
“Dance to be danced, move to be followed” was the motto of 15th edition of Antistatic festival, whose website explains that ““Dance to be danced” is a symbolic two-tiered appeal – from artists from previous decades in dance to those who come after them, as well as from “Antistatic” to their audience”.
Antistatic Festival mottos are always chosen very carefully, in regard to the current geopolitical and social situation, as I could see from the last editions I took part in: in 2018 it was “State of emergency: Keep calm and dance on”, with the idea of presenting an alternative and demilitirised state of emergency; “Vote for dance” was picked in May 2019, the period of the European elections; and for 2020 and 2021 the reference was to the issues caused by the pandemic and the need to reestablish the human and physical connection among each others, compromised after the lockdowns, with “Life is live” and “Getting closer”.
Also this edition had a direct allusion to the contemporary events, in particular the war in Ukraine: “Antistatic” #15 invites you to stand up against statics and against war. So that you can again find the human-artistic, and the artistic-human, in the dynamics of dance, after which statics will be just a part of mechanics, not a part of thinking, and war will be just a word from the cover of a book.”
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| Photo by Maria Volkova for Antistatic Festival |
The anti-war position of the festival was shown also by a simple, yet meaningful gesture. As a sign of solidarity and support to the Ukrainian population and the Russian citizens who are oppressed by the regime, every day of the festival it took place the recorded reading of the poem Đ’Đ¾Đ¹Đ½Đ° (=war) written by Anton Ovchinnikov, a Ukrainian choreographer who is now living in a bunker, instead of working on a stage. In his poem, written in Russian, Anton speaks about switched off lights, finished cigarettes, undrank tea, and broken glasses. The people who, like me, do not speak Russian, probably could grasp the meaning of just a few words, like the ones designating some objects listed in the poem. Yet, the sound of those words, together with the beats and the electronic soundtrack, created a climax of uneasiness and urgency that was very clear and powerful.
Having made this premise, let’s get started with the performances! On the 9th May Antistatic Festival opened presenting Duets with abstraction, by German choreographer Julian Weber in the National Gallery of Art Quadrat 500. He had selected three art pieces of the gallery - the paintings The Glass Jug by Ivan Nenov and Window by Nayden Petkov together with the sculpture Caprice by Lin Emery- and would perform “with” them. We read that “the formality of abstraction collides with an organic body: a living body trying to communicate, grab the artwork’s attention, flirt, become intimate, or even merge with the artwork”.
On that sunny day, at 19.00, we spectators gathered on the highest floor of the gallery and then entered a long room, whose long sides were provided with a line of chairs and cushions on the ground. There were the three artworks, the sound equipment, Julian Weber and his collaborator and musician Johanna Oderski. The atmosphere, for me, was really pleasant: being in a space other than a theatre, full of natural lights, with the view of Sofia centre, looking forward to the upcoming site specific performance which represented the beginning of the festival was really exciting!
The three words I chose for Duets with Abstraction are: room, expressive, chase.
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| Duets with abstraction. Photo by Teodora Simova for Antistatic Festival |
Room
It often happens that contemporary dance artists use the stage in a very bold way, breaking the barrier that separates them from the audience, interacting with them, or using parts of the stage not dedicated to it. That was the case of Duets with abstraction. This performance did not follow a classic dramaturgy, but was rather “developed as a continuous exploratory journey”. I personally saw it being very connected to the use of the space, and I think Weber explored most of the possibilities given by the gallery room. He covered the whole area of the room walking, crawling or running. He got closer to the paintings or touched the sculpture, occasionally approached some spectators, climbed a sound box, and made use of certain objects (a glove, a guitar). But he also exited the room, slammed the doors of the toilets, ran out on the terrace and smashed his body and face in the door glass, in the attempt to pass through it. I saw it as the effort to reach the unreachable, as the fusion with the art pieces he danced with is.
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| Duets with abstraction. Photo by Teodora Simova for Antistatic Festival |
Expressive
From the very beginning, when he was lying on the ground on his back starting, I was impressed by Weber’s movements. His hands shaked as if affected by a pathological condition, his back effortlessly drew arches and bridges in the air, his face expressed commitment, dissatisfaction, joy, concentration or madness, maybe according to the effect the art pieces had on him. I must admit it, I fell in love with his movements and didn’t care too much about finding a connection between them and the pieces of art he was working with. I enjoyed the performance even just for the sheer pleasure of watching him.
Chase
His restless errand in the room, the trembling movement of his hands towards a specific direction and his sometimes dissatisfied facial expressions, to me looked like a vital endeavour, a quest for something essential, I guess the impossible-to-reach “union with the work of art”.
In this search, the performer was also running after something, chasing something: ideas, the music, inspiration, instinct, interaction with the audience, abstraction.
So, these are some impressions about Duets with abstraction, which seemed to be quite appreciated by the audience. Julian Weber kept working in the gallery with five Bulgarian dancers on Moving in Squares, a collaborative choreographic laboratory whose presentation took place on the 15th May and was also part of Antistatic program.
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