Adventures in Movement (pt 2)

The following are two reviews of works presented at the Adventures in Movement festival at the Arcola Theatre. You can read Diana Damian’s coverage of After Cinderella and Violet Smile also part of the festival. The event runs from July 6 – August 12. For more information and for a full programme visit the Arcola Theatre website.

Mass Exercise
With Nadia and Olga Sokolski

Devised and performed by Performance Klub Fiskulturnic
Concept, direction, performance: Olga: Lara Ritosa Roberts
Aristic collaboration, performance: Nadia: Ivana Peranic
www.fiskultura.com

Exploring the relationship between ideology and body culture, the piece takes its material from the archetypal Eastern European gymnasts of the 1970s. Based on Fiskultura, the theory and practice of physical culture practiced during Soviet communism, Nadia and Olga walk us through a series of warm-ups and simple exercises that eventually persuade us to join in the mass dance-exercise-celebration (and who cares what we’re celebrating?).

Olga (Lara Ritosa Roberts) is Nadia’s (Ivana Peranic) instructor. Using text based on speeches by the former Yugoslavian leader Tito, and sound from military parades and Ex- Yugoslavian music, Olga talks Nadia and us through the warm ups that progress into dance sequences. I am encouraged to wave a flag (red, white and blue, the former Yugoslavian flag) and, without even realising, I’m up on stage joining in some dance-celebration.

Based on a very simple progressive structure, packed with double meanings and two very well rounded characters, Mass Exercise is a piece that challenges the notion of identity and the embodiment of ideology. It alludes to a socialist realism that links body and ideology, transforming the body into a mechanism that can be owned and controlled.

The movements taken from Fiskultura pamphlets are simple, robotic, architectural and, well, educational. The dance the audience is invited to join in contains sequences of movement with names such as ‘propeller of change’, ‘greet the revolution’ and ‘fight the enemy’. It’s not only a look back into an archive of physical experience, but a satire of collective art (we are reminded during the performance that we are a community of comrades who wish to collectively create better art) explored through a physical text.

Vulnerasti
By Lo Commotion Dance Company

Four performers unfold the story of a relationship behind a photograph in this short dance piece. Intertwining monologue with dance against extracts from Dietrich Buxtehude’s Membra Jesu Nostri, the piece explores the turmoil of a ravished heart.

Vulnerasti is the second part of Ad Cor (meaning ‘to the heart’) in Dietrich Buxtehude’s Membra Jesu Nostri, and a biblical extract from the Song of Solomon. The lyrical and tragic atmosphere of the song is directly reflected in both the languid, fluid dancing and the very detailed description of the story and emotions behind the photograph.

Although beautiful to watch, Vulnerasti seems to follow a single line, despite the different textures of the spoken language and the effort of the skilled dancers. Tragedy is enforced in all the elements of the piece, and too much of the text is illustrated, leaving little for the audience to uncover. For this reason, Vulnerasti falls short of dramatic tension, leaving the mysteries of this relationship in the hands of the storyteller, not the minds of the audience.