Veronika Ágnes Tóth

IN THE ARENA

D’Watt International Contemporary Dance and Circus Jamboree / Gödör

  

2010.09.22.

The D’Watt Festival served as a superb season opening at Gödör: the world of circus and contemporary dance had flirted with each other during a most enjoyable weekend, attracting great attention. A report by Ágnes Veronika Tóth.

It was Gabriella Máthé who came up with the idea, carried out the selection of participants, coordinated and hosted the second D’Watt International Contemporary Dance and Circus Jamboree. The event proved that it is indeed worthwhile to bring these two art forms onto a common platform, not the least because in recent years it had become clear that there are ample points of connection between them: new circus productions are now full of dance elements, while contemporary dance has started incorporating some acrobatics and trapeze stunts here and there.

At any rate, this mixture attracted a huge audience at Gödör, including families with small children. The theatre hall was packed and the usual audience consisting mainly of professional crowds was at last outweighed by “civilians”. In the original programme it may have been envisioned that a day of predominantly circus shows will be followed by a day of largely dance performances, but due to a programme change the last day of the two-day festival, when I went to visit, performers were of both art forms.

 

The conclusion, in short, is that Gabriella Máthé made a great selection of participants. The ironic one-man shows of circus artists Alessandro Maida and Maxime Pythoud are among the best of their genre. The deeply emotional choreographies of Christian and François Ben Aïm, inspired by the photography of Josef Koudelka, provide a special experience. The debut of the day’s Hungarian performer, CirkuSzínház, with its enthusiastic members, was timely, even if there was more dedication in their production at this point than effortlessness.

 

The charm of Alessandro Maida’s and Maxime Pythoud’s pieces lies in the fact that their productions are both masterful and lack seriousness at the same time, and involve excellent acting and self-irony. Their representation of stumbling characters in both cases demand a great deal of previous practice; self-reflection refers to the genre and the role performed on the stage. It is true though that nowadays the new trend in circus is to give up, or at least question, perfection in the shows, and Maida’s and Pythoud’s pieces follow this trend as well. Their performances are characterized by ease, humour, distinctive style and impeccable technique; Alessandro Maida, evoking an elegant bartender, balances on a ball, while pretending that he might fall off any minute. Maxime Pythoud – clad in a pyjama-like, elastic outfit – clowns around clinging to a metal ring, using his own weight to swing it into motion, acting as a living parody of Leonardo’s Vitruvian Man. I will cherish this image: finally a wicked astronaut in pyjamas on stage!

 

My impression is that precisely this light, self-reflexive feature was lacking in the four-person production of the choreographer Zoltán Feicht. But I don’t want to seem unfair: it must be terribly hard to be self-reflective when you’re hanging upside down several metres high in the air. The piece therefore follows the traditional, somewhat out-moded circus dramaturgy: a succession of stunts, mostly on the trapeze. Of course, the choreographer leaving the National Ballet to join the Cirque du Soleil, doesn’t have an easy job, as it is probably impossible to evoke the professional and charming illusion factory he saw abroad while having significantly less financing. Thus the somewhat overlong performance reflects the hard work and sweat that went into making it. Nevertheless, the production is made colourful by the diversity of genres; particularly strong are the dance parts which use no tools but blend acrobatic and break elements. Debóra Kovács, Betty Szilágyi, Péter Nguyen and  Zoltán Szénási Gergely do their best. They demonstrate how light and supple they can be when they throw the somersaults one after the other during the applause at the end of the show. A shorter and more dynamic show with such acrobatics and a predominantly playful atmosphere, which now frames the performance, then it could be a bigger hit. Still, the audience gave a big hand to the harbingers of new Hungarian circus art.

 

On the other hand, the piece of CFB 451 (O Mon Frere!), choreographed by Christian and François Ben Aïm, strikes you and takes you in from the very start. I have no idea what makes it so forceful, maybe the visceral authenticity of the dancers, or the music of Leonard Cohen, but it’s been a long time since a choreography affected me so much. Their trio with Eric Fessenmeyer move around unbelievably vast energies on stage: to see these three middle-aged characters, bruised by life, come alive on stage takes you time travel and a psychological deep-diving. The piece is without frills, raw and distinctively masculine, while also bashfully emotional: every moment implies the fact that these characters belong to each other. Dejection and strength clash against each other on the stage; one dancer is dragging himself leaning on a cane, while the other fills the space with acrobatics and dynamism. Mutual dependence and loneliness, isolation and a sense of outlandishness, communication vacuum and belonging: the ambivalence of the relationship between brothers/sisters is addressed.

 

So is something else. At times it seems as if motions were conveying the sense of burn-out and hopelessness of fighting and wounded solders. When solders return to save their bleeding fellow-soldiers, even when he cannot be saved (in some of the scenes one or two dancers are present as heavy burden on the shoulders of the others). Later it turns out that the choreographer brothers were inspired by Jan Koudelka’s starkly beautiful and dark photos depicting human misery and hopelessness.

 

After some searching I found a black and white photo, taken in Ireland in 1972, portraying three middle-aged men with deep furrows on their faces, leaning on sticks and staring into nothing. The dance performance, however, transcends by far the seemingly documentarist photos of the world-famous and acknowledged photographer, which consciously aesthetize misery: in the photos people seem as if they were extras, whereas in the dance piece we see hard lives without any frills.

 

By  Veronika Ágnes Tóth