Kursk @ Young Vic

One hour and a half standing for seeing a performance is a lot? Well... yesterday.. even if I felt a bit tired (physically meaning) towards the end (after a long day) I really enjoyed the performance.

I passed an hour and a half inside a submarine! Watching the life of five sailors during their mission. I will not reveal more about the story because maybe some of you would like to see it. It is actually based on the real story of Kursk (russian submarine that sunk in 2000, causing the death to 130 sailors).

Anyway, what was of my interest in this play was the body relation of the audience with the space and the actors. We entered in a submarine, with the actors-sailors already there (doind some simple actions)and we were litteraly on the stage during the whole performance. The action took place around us in different spots or in two or three spots simultaneously. So we had to move and look around in order to watch. There were moments when the actors were in a touching distance or moments when you would step on another spectator trying to see better. I felt like it was a shared experienced and felt more like I belonged to a group of people (the audience) than in a typical seated performance. The element that made the experience stronger is the sound. It was of a high quality and there were moments that scared us or surprised us. It was the sound coming from everywhere that gave you the feeling of being inside the submarine.

From the other hand I have to say that in terms of narrative and acting it was a typical theatre performance. There was a story that kept the audience stimulated and a beginning and end (even though when we entered the space, the actors were already there).

In general it made me think a lot on the standing and walking audience and the performance happening all around it. The division stage-audience doesnt exist and the performance becomes a walk-in installation. It is an interesting experiment that gives the spectator a role in the piece and make him active and more stimulated. Nice!

Lab 3 - some questions

These are two columns of meanings that can be applied respectively to cinema and theatre and more specifically to video and live performance.

Cinema – Theatre

Video – Live Performance

Memory – Reality

Past – Present

Absence – Presence

Immaterial – Material

Unconscious – Conscious

My research is based on the combination of live performance with projected images and videos in order to represent memory. In cinema, with the help of flashback the characters are transported into the past very successfully.

How can we achieve this in a live performance with the contribution of video?

How can the cinematic language be integrated in the performance?

How do we combine the live body with the projected image in order to create an illusion to the audience?

What belongs to the past (memory) and what belongs to now (reality)?

How can the present and the past body coexist within live space?

The aim is to create an illusion and a dreamy atmosphere for the audience.

Lets try to put these in one question… How can we represent memory in a performance through video projections and in combination with the live body and the recorded body in order to create an illusion to the audience?

www.dimitrispapaioannou.com

This is one of my favourite director-choreographer-artist from Greece. And probably the only one in Greece with this quality of work! just take a look!

a very inspiring poem

This is one of my favourite greek poems.Of course poetry cannot be translated, so it is not the same like reading it in greek, but this is the only way we can communicate... (language is so powerful!)

........

And the poet lingers, looking at the stones, and asks himself
does there really exist
among these ruined lines, edges, points, hollows and curves
does there really exist
here where one meets the path of rain, wind and ruin
does there exist the movement of the face, shape of the tenderness
of those who’ve waned so strangely in our lives,
those who remained the shadow of waves and thoughts with the sea’s boundlessness
or perhaps no, nothing is left but the weight
the nostalgia for the weight of a living existence
there where we now remain unsubstantial, bending
like the branches of a terrible willow tree heaped in unremitting despair
while the yellow current slowly carries down rushes uprooted in the mud
image of a form that the sentence to everlasting bitterness has turned to stone: the poet a void.

Extract from the poem “The King of Asini” by George Seferis, Translated by Edmund Keeley and Philip Sherrard

As one-Rushes-Infra

I am going to a lot of performances and theatre plays but it is difficult to see something that has a connection with my enquiries and my interests. Last week I went to a performance at the Royal Opera House after Esteban’s suggestion. Unfortunately I only found a ticket for the upper slips and I could see only the half of the stage… So maybe I have lost some small parts. Actually they were three dance performances, all of them with a scenography (or a kind of) made of projections and videos. The type of dance was a kind of contemporary ballet, an hybrid form that I cannot define accurately. But anyway, what drew my attention was the way they used the projections in relation to the choreography, the bodies, the narrative.

As one
In the first one, the projection was presenting the façade of a building with the different flat – windows, illustrated with different colours. The people moved inside them like shadows. Here, the projection is used more like a scenography and it contributes to the understanding of the narrative of the piece. But, in my opinion it worked only as a decorating element, while I would like a more interacting function of it.



Rushes – Fragments of a lost story
The second one was for me the best of all and the one more near to my practice. It was an atmospheric piece presenting fragments of a love story. We were presented parts of the narrative and not a linear, complete story. There was a bead curtain-screen, dividing the stage in two parts, where the images were projected. The dancers were moving in front of the screen and behind. When they were behind it, as there were some abstract images on it, a dreamy feeling was produced. Numbers counting down from an old film (I found out that the choreographer Kim Brandstrup, had studied film before choreography), images of a forest and some other abstract ones were projected on the screen. I liked very much this division of the stage by the screen that created like two realities. A fragmented story presented in a fragmented stage. On the back part of the stage there was another curtain, where took place another part of the choreography. Some dancers, looking more like shadows, were dancing there. Another layer of the narrative (and another layer of the projection), less important is unfolding on the back of the stage. In this performance, the projection is an organic and essential part of it. It is not simply scenography. The performers are interacting with it. By moving the curtain (screen) the images are shaking, disappearing and appearing again. It was a very simple idea that, in my opinion worked very well.



Infra
The last piece was interesting also but more from a point of view of the choreography and not the video. The video was a black and white screen showing people like shadows walking. For me, its most important function was to keep a tempo. The most powerfull scene was when a big group of dancers started walking to the same direction and with the same rythme with the video above them.

Lab 1

Today I was very happy to see the works of my collegues for their labs.
Everybody had something interesting to show and some inspiring convesations followed.
Of course that made me even more stressed for my lab! Seeing others works is always inspiring and motivating for me.