The walk concludes with the folk singing of all the performers kneeling on the lawn. The emotions reverberate long after the performance, which is truly an experience. Minar and Michalak were able to offer a completely new and imaginative reality, experiences and ideas during the course of the hour. A bonus is that, thanks to the setting of the performance in a busy part of the park, even passers-by who might not otherwise have encountered contemporary art were now and then present for a moment. Lush Blast is in all ways a very successful event. It would certainly be interesting to see how this work works in the environments of different parks or cities, how its message and meanings change with the place.
The formerly inanimate stone unravels and its three parts - the three performers - gain their autonomy. "Do you remember how you learned to walk?" one of the performers asks, trying to get us to take off our shoes and experience the journey to the fullest. Unlike a few brave souls, I won't do so because I'm wearing barefoot shoes, but I would otherwise consider the move. I will note, however, that suddenly the audience becomes more attentive, not only to the performers' walk, but to their own.
“So what’s driving people ‘s practices right now and how can we create possibility for people to share them, like open source your practice, basically. And I think that beyond utopia, like utopic vision, would be that everyone gets funded and there is enough money for everyone, we don’t need to worry about financial or programming issues. And dystopia would be that arts collapse and there is no more possibility to have any art at all. But I think we are looking at the practical possibility what are some real strategies we cand find sustainability as a working contemporary dance theatre artists in May 2024 in Prague and Berlin.
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A body is political, dance is political, so we may not explicitly touch on geopolitics but the production of dance and the support of art in general and the making of art is societal concern and the way that that happens is something that is entangled in larger issues inherently. “
"I must admit, however, that I am a degree more sympathetic to the approach of Alica Minar and her colleagues, which is more rooted in street and folk theatre. We don't necessarily need to connect ourselves to the land (although I don't think anyone would stop us from doing so), but rather to the emotions and expression of the performers in the landscape. As an audience, we transform ourselves into a procession led by a "rat woman" with a loudspeaker instead of a whistle to a place where the performers blend into the landscape or embody figures with animal-like powers and unbridled strength as they tell of the predatory nature of the landscape.
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A number of humorous details emerge and awaken associations in the viewer, whether it's the stage design elements made from sugar or Alica's play on the chainsaw chain as a magnificent necklace. The play with the lights in the final scene at a rest stop above the river, as dusk arrived, is a poetic image that deserves to be preserved (and to be transformed again into some no-longer-performative social event)."
"Alice Minar's piece, Woods Won't Vaporize, also creates a kind of landscape - in which we enter an imaginary forest, where the dancers are both the inhabitants and the landscape itself. In her choreography, Alice Minar highlights her fascination with extensions of the human body, through costumes that in some way inhibit or prevent the movements of the performers and force the dancers to search for new physical expression, through playing with scenographic objects and through an atmosphere marked by lighting design that easily transports the viewer from a forest thicket to the frosty plains of Alaska. (We can agree that the forests aren't going to disappear, the question is: what about the people...)."
"At the moment I tend to think about topics in a more positive way. I feel an inner need to direct my attention to the softer, friendlier and warmer aspects of life, which awaken a sense of openness and acceptance in me. The contrast I created in the past by focusing on serious topics and bringing humor to them is now reversed. My focus is leaning more toward topics that create a sense of belonging or connection, but within them something serious is being addressed.
... Even after the production is done, one has to communicate to oneself and to the team what it is they have actually created and how to replicate it again. With solo work, I don't talk to myself, but I still have to communicate with the people that make up the team around me, so dialogue is still central. I can't actually create on my own, I need someone to be there to at least either watch or talk to me."
