Slowing down the time and liberating the senses, Jelena Mihelčić, KULISA.eu 2008.11.11
Zagreb dance company and Compagnie Martine Pisani: Blink, concept and choreography Martine Pisani
After two performances on the two, besides Contemporary dance week, most significant dance festivals in Croatia: The festival of dance and nonverbal theater Svetvincenat and Platforme of young choreographers with the dance piece sans, Martine Pisani has been created a new performance with Croatian dancers in the production of Zagreb dance company. The company is in this way coming back to the collaborations with the foreign choreographers, after the successful performance created by the company’s artistic director. Blink had its opening night on the 9. of November, after only 7 weeks of rehearsals which was enough time for Miss. Pisani to experience not so bright subtenants conditions in which the Croatian dance community is existing on the daily basis.
The viewers who had the opportunity to watch sans, could recognize a unique signature of Martine Pisani: stage completely cleansed of any kind of decor or overly designed lights ( Aleksandar Čavlek), the certain minimalism of the sound (Damir Šimunović), every day comfortable clothes (Emina Tataragic) in the style of Judson’s sneakers , all of which comes from the choreographers experience of collaborating with the heroes of contemporary dance as Yvonne Rainer, or David Gordon, the cofounders of so called walking dance. The work of Pisani in Croatia is a part of the cycle Running Times, which has started last year and which is realized in different geographical context but with one single preoccupation: the issue of time.
Blink doesn't have any visible development of its internal structure, it consists of the chain of look-like accidental situations created by the meetings of dancers with the numerous objects that sourands them. In fact, the performance starts with the performers rushing around the stage, entering trough the all possible doors, bringing in the bare space a pile of different objects, creating in that way the mass of movable scenery that serves as a basic impulse for the future development of the performance. Except the very beginning, the only aloof part of the performance is a story with which one of the performers tries to verbally describe what are we going to see and what changes has been brought in to the performance creation, demonstrating by that the impossibility of verbal representation of movement and time. All that is happening after this is one long scene in which the performers try to play with the mass of objects, from the movable stairs, garbage can, the remains of the other performance-scenery, pillows, broom, ropes. They even succeed to wash the whole stage with the cleaning supplies. Every performer exhausts till the end the object that gives him/her the specific frame of movement. Those movements trough its repetition, modifications and miniature changes change our perception or the meaning which goes together with in on the first sight. All the actions on the stage goes simultaneously , ofently the action of a single performer serves as an impulse for the whole wave which connects the other performers , resulting in the numerous exciting situations where especially scenic are Sara Barbieri and Marko Jastrevski. The rest of the performers are Darija Doždor, Zrinka Lukčec, Maja Marjančić, Andreja Široki and Ognjen Vučinić. The title of the performance has been inspired by the basic repetitious motive; especially accentuated blinking of the performers which purpose is to point out on the very act of the passage of time. The dramaturge of the performance is Saša Božić. Pisani has been inspired by the French philosopher Henri Bergson for this performance, especially by his work The Metter and memory, in which he uses the term of an image trying to explain how we can experience the essence of some Metter, avoiding the rational and including the intuition. According to Bergson, the Metter decreases itself around countless vibrations, connected in continuing continuity, traveling in all ways, like a quiver. We are the closest to the understanding of the Metter when we are in connection with its constant move, because the every fixation in an image means its decay. That kind of perception Bergson calls necessary poverty. It is this very minimal, but continuous movement which we are affected trough the performance of Miss. Pisani, which makes this piece so successful in the decay of time, giving on the other hand the liberation of the audience senses which opens a gate in a new dimension.