Concept and choreography: Magdalena Reiter
Created and performed by: Lada Petrovski Ternovšek, Maruša Majer,
Dušan Teropšič, Magdalena Reiter
Text: Stanisław Ignacy Witkiewicz – Witkacy
Music: Aleš Zorec
Set design: Marko Japelj
Video design: Gašper Brezovar
Light design: Simon Žižek
Photography: Borut Peterlin
Producer: Andrej Berger
Produced by: Anton Podbevšek Teater
Premiere: 07.11.2014, Anton Podbevšek Teater
Performance inspired by the writing and photographic opus of Stanistaw lgnacy Witkiewicz – Witkacy takes on a journey into an intimate and painful insight into a place ruled by a state of fragmentarity and the instinct of insatiability. The body which is marked by this insatiability is driven to seeking out extreme physical conditions – through breath, which as a sign of life transmits agony, fear, desire into the body by investigating the face, its expressions and its gestus, through touch, which transmits subtle violence against others and manipulation or through the physical falling of bodies from comfort and security.
It seems as though the insatiable instinct is hurtling towards annihilation with unchecked speed – towards a violent crash, which will ravage the individual and society or it will nullify us – leave us hanging in the void, unfulfillment, disintegration.
Excerpts from reviews:
At first glance this performative piece, which puts in focus movement and as a starting point takes the body, is based on strong atmosphere and places feelings on the first experiential plane. On the second glance it is somewhat more complex matter: the performance is continually exposing twosomes of elements (movement-sound, mimicry-speech/words, movement- image, ect.) which is then linked into a complex ,but very coherent web. Four excellent performers are carrying each their own story, which is then gently and unobtrusively fusing with one others’ into a well composed entirety.
The pathways that are being taken in the course of the performance are deepening, we could say that the project exceeds the subject and through pushing the body to the edge it reveals the entirely of human existence.
The texts of the Polish avant-garde poet, painter and philosopher Witkiewicz are excellently performed by Maruša Majer and dramaturgically effectively placed. They keep deconstructing ever more to establish the relationship between avant-garde and contemporaneity.
Magdalena Reiter into this exceptional choreography includes death throes of the subject pushed to the extreme boundaries. The performance, which is aesthetically extremely elaborated, exposes also what is bitter, painful and misunderstood about human and precisely through this decomposition established the totality of perspective.
★★★★
DELO, 15.11.2014, Anja Radaljac
Magdalena Reiter staged a complex dance performance, which explores the philosophy of life and death, the time of decaying ethical norms and withered life principles between the two wars (…). The authoress focuses on the body, which in its’ movement structures carries life and transmits vibrations of time, however regardless of the time frame, ever again it falls under the force of gravity and destruction of time.
Well-put together and well-tuned team of performers and dancers in the wind of youth, maturity and strenght, accompanied by words and video projections, can be placed in any time frame (…). The four players fill the choreographic space in a vivid and dynamic way, but also reveal themselves in individual forms and images, as well as imprint a life suggestion into the scene when, in a new atmosphere and through contemporary technology of movement images, vibrate Witkacy’s artistic dimensions and profundity of thinking. Thus in Magdalena Reiter’s staging, Pars pro Witkacy and in comparison with the artistic opus of Witkiewicz, the artist’s mental structures obtain one hundred years-old identity, when clearly and understandably transposed into contemporaneity.
PARADA PLESA, 30.11.2014, Daliborka Podboj
MAGDALENA REITER 