Doors of internal rooms

Russian contemporary dance theaters in search of their path

“3petiX” - in a sort of intricate way, the troupe “Po.V.S.Tantsy” writes the name of its performance “Triptych”. The name of the performance of the Iguana Dance Theater troupe - “Popupgrade” can also be deciphered only by personally asking the director what it means. (Nina Gasteva delivers a monologue about how her theater transforms pop cultural symbols.) Contemporary dance in both Moscow and St. Petersburg (“Almost Internally Free Dancing” is a theater operating in the capital for eight years; “Iguanas” brought its premiere from the shores Neva) tries hard to seem complex and mysterious - which betrays his unconditional teenage complexes. But two premieres, played in one evening on the stage of the Luna Theater as part of the “Performaniya” project (it is carried out by the agency of dance theaters “Tsekh”), show what different roads contemporary dance theaters choose

“Iguan Dance Theater” is a public route. They decide to fight pop and stage a play about Barbie and Ken. (A blonde with an affectedly bitchy expression on her face, a tall awkward young man with an extremely rustic expression and - apparently, Cindy? - a black-haired girl, diligently goggle her eyes). For almost forty minutes, two girls and a young man imitate the angular gait of dolls; and this is the only plastic move in the performance. Everything else is minor directorial stuff with an unpleasant physiological coloring. Here is a guy and a girl tearing off the peeling skin from the second girl (no, of course, this is transparent makeup pasted on her face, arms and knees - but it was done convincingly and nauseatingly). Now the young man begins to feel sick - something falls out of his mouth in pieces into a handkerchief held out to him. "Iguana Dance Theater" is putting on a performance about the transformation of pop dolls into people - in the program it is called "implantation of the circulatory system" - but the artists present human life as very unsightly.

In the middle of the performance, blank sheets of a diary, pages of business newspapers and horoscopes begin to be thoughtfully projected onto the screen. The quality of this video is, as they say, poorly made - everything is muddy, clumsy and poorly edited, but you can check the box: new technologies are involved. And when, in the second half of the performance, meaningless but obscene dialogues appear in the soundtrack, and a toy airplane explodes colorfully on the screen, it becomes somehow completely uncomfortable for the director, who has exchanged her fifth decade. An amateur video plus foul language plus hints of topicality - and zero choreographic ingenuity - a completely hopeless case.

“Po.V.S.Dancing” works completely differently. They are interested in movement first of all, movement as such - the limits of human capabilities. Two solos (Alexandra Konnikova, Albert Albert) and then an emerging duet - a series of questions to your own body: can you do it? Will you be able to arch in a convulsion, imitate the muddily choking gait of a down, whooping furiously, hitting the apple with a small knife - will you be able to free yourself from the memory of civilization and at the same time not sin in any way against the iron laws of the stage, invented by civilization? Konnikova’s monologue is called “The Key,” and the program contains the declaration “I can open any of the doors of my inner rooms.” Both Konnikova and Albert (depicting a dead body, which is outlined with “paint” - whipped cream snorted from a spray can - by an employee, and then this body looks at its own contour and begins to try to fuck this contour) do not sort out their relationship with the world. They sort themselves out - it seems natural, but there is a clear sequence of “inception-climax-denouement” - and it seems that this is the most fruitful path for the development of dance in general and contemporary dance in particular.

Anna GORDEEVA