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.
For the third time Antistatic Festival organised within its frame the Bulgarian Dance Platform, in which a good amount of recent Bulgarian performances are presented and to which international artists, cultural workers and festival organisers are invited as guests/spectators. For the Bulgarian-based choreographers this is a great opportunity to show their work (and possibly get it shown in other countries).
This edition of the festival included 12 events distributed in 4 days (11th-14th May) in the different locations of the festival: Toplocentrala, Derida Stage, Krasno Selo Cultural Center and the SAMCA Gallery. Walking from one place to the other reminded me of my first university years in Padua, when I had lessons in different buildings located in different parts of the city with a maximum of 15 minutes pause in between. My university mates and I always joked that we should get a degree in Literature with a specialisation in physical education, due to the running we had to perform every day from one end of the city to the other! Well, during the Bulgarian Dance Platform it wasn’t so hectic, but the feeling was similar, as we were a group moving together for the same interest. During those days I met interesting people, with some of them I shared contacts, a drink, a bite of pizza on the road, and opinions on the performances.
In this post I will present the performances I saw (during the Bulgarian Platform or on other occasions) not in a chronological order, but following a personal itinerary that makes sense to me.
Lovecage, by Filip Milanov, deals with a love triangle between a man and two women. The style of movement seems inspired by neoclassical ballet and each aspect of the piece (music, lights, dramaturgy, scenography...) is accurate to the finest details. The setting (the inside of a house) and the topic reminded me of Apartment by Mats Ek. The words I choose to depict it are: contrast (between man and women, between the two women, between the different parts of the piece); smooth (as smooth are the transition, the movements, the development of the “story”) and fight (as the characters fight between each other and with themselves).
Also in Temel, by Jivko Jeliazkov, the structure is quite traditional: the audience is placed in front of the performers, who dance on the stage. Here the different elements create a holistic environment that surrounds the spectators and hypnotises them. If in Lovecage we see variations in the dance formations (solos, duets and triplets), in Temel symmetry has the best and geometric patterns (which are a peculiarity of Jeliazkov's works) contribute to create a totalizing effect. I chose the word ground as a noun, as the floorwork is very prominent and it represents the link with the roots, the Earth. Mystic would be the adjective, as the atmosphere of the piece. And sparkle would be the verb, because of the constant flow of lights given by the golden strips hanging from the ceiling.
 |
| Temel. Photo by Teodora Simova for Antistatic Festival |
I don’t know if these two works impressed the foreign audience, because they are not something stunningly new or shuttering, but they well represent a certain current of contemporary dance in Bulgaria, closer to a more classical background, which shouldn’t be ignored.
Another piece that in a certain way is connected with roots is WO MAN, by Marion Darova, performed by her and Martina Apostolova, which won the Ikar award for the best contemporary dance performance in 2021. Here the focus seems to be on challenging social stereotypes, in particular the ones related to gender. Two distinct parts compose the piece: in the first one a video projection shows the two performers engaged in different actions, often presenting objects or gestures connected with femininity. In the second one they dance on stage, varying the direction and the speed of their steps. To me a connection between the two parts seemed to be missing, thus conditioning my opinion on the piece that in the end looked a bit lacking and boring (even though I admire the performers for remembering the very long step sequence!). For this reason the words I chose to sketch the dance work are: stereotype, repetitive and walk. Anyway, I would be very interested in watching other works by Darova, who has been quite productive in Sofia in recent years.
Certified copy is the last (solo) work by Galina Borissova, a cornerstone of Bulgarian contemporary dance. The words I picked to guide me through this performance are sharing, cosy, be. As WO MAN, also this piece starts with a video, in which the choreographer’s friends and collaborators talk about her works and persona, often referencing the theme of originality. There is a sharing of different perspectives. Even if this part is quite long and a bit self referential, it was interesting for me to hear how a performance I had watched was remembered and summarised in two completely different ways by two people. It felt as if I could hear different biographies of Borissova and I had to choose the proper information to make up my own version. The atmosphere was extremely cosy and intimate, as we were laying on big fluffy pillows. Be is the chosen verb, because I feel the piece pretty much goes around a matter of identity: who is Galina Borissova? What’s her work about? Is she original? What does that mean?
 |
| Certified copy. Photo by Violeta Apostolova |
Other questions were opened up by Before the End … (of the World), by Iva Sveshtarova and Willy Prager, who performed together with Nathan Cooper and Miroslava Zahova. In their typical mix of dancing, acting, and wise use of props, they showed an unconventional apocalyptic scenario without any traditional apocalyptic-tragic traits. You don’t exit the door thinking “I understood everything”: you leave the performing space questioning yourself about the meaning of certain choices, dialogues or objects, instead. But you also enjoy a good mix of humour and bold ideas. That’s why the first two words that I think are representative are: question and witty. I chose play as a verb because the artists play roles, play among each other, and play with words. At the beginning, for example, they are half naked, crawling on the floor, with attached on their back white balloons that run one of the words: “the”, “future”, “will”, “end”. Besides the most obvious sentence, “The future will end”, I thought of the different variants these words allow to create: “Will the future end?”; “End the future!”; “Will (vs) future”; “Future will”. I don’t know if that was intentional, but it triggered questions and stimulated my imagination, which I believe are key elements in contemporary art works.
 |
| Before the End...(of the World). Photo by Teodora Simova for Antistatic Festival |
In the end, I will mention the pieces Dance, baby, dance, which I had the pleasure to review for the magazine “Списание за танц” (“Dance Magazine”), by Zhana Pencheva, and DragON aka PHOENIX, still by Zhana, plus Aleksandar Georgiev - Ace and Darío Barreto Damas, which constitute the artistic group STEAM ROOM. In the first one we see a group of six people, who look like friends having a party in a club. You are surrounded by a glamour atmosphere, catchy electro-pop music, sexy movements, and very convincing performers. This last element in particular made me enjoy the piece a lot, and considering the applause, the audience too. Thus, these three words that can give an idea of the performance could be: party, beat, wild. Spectators were really receptive and involved also in the other work, DragON aka PHOENIX: I saw them dancing on their seats, laughing, clapping and responding with their eyes to the charming gaze of the three performers and choreographers. Gaze is in fact the first word I chose, followed by ironic and fly. Ironic because in DragON we could see different dance styles mocked (ballet, musical, contemporary dance) and the same artists were laughing at themselves, without ever being banal. Fly, in the end, gives the idea of lightness, of birds, as the phoenix mentioned in the title, and of a movement that can have variations according to the current, the moment, the needs.
 |
| Dance, baby, dance. Photo by Natalya Sidorenko |
Through these and the other events I didn’t attend (Rituals of Soul, PURE /youth/, Impossible Actions. A Conversation with Artist Yasen Vasilev, Differsonalities, Initial Boost), I think Bulgarian Dance Platform #3 managed to provide the local and international audience with a wide spectrum of the hottest tendencies in the country in the last two years, including both affirmed artists, and younger ones, and I hope it represented a good opportunity for future collaborations and networking.
Comments
Post a Comment