[seen 08/07/16]
Watch the above trailer.
iFeel2 is basically that for an hour.
If you want to imagine it properly, in the Baltoscandal performance(s) at the Sport-Church (a venue I love very deeply, and not just because it’s a church that got converted into a sports hall in communist times and was thus renamed Sport-Church, but also because it was here that I saw Gisele Vienne’s I Apologize in 2008 – still perhaps my favourite theatre memory of all time...) it’s lighter than the above video suggests. The basketball hoop still stands at the back of the “stage”. You can see the court markings on the floor beyond the performance area.
From the ceiling hang seven models of plants of varying sizes at varying heights.
There is a six- by six-lantern lighting rig hung stage right, with alternating red, green and blue lights, calibrated to a cast warm, near-colourless glow over the stage (plus pretty, multi-coloured shadows. Yay!).
The music continues lounge-y.
The dancing continues lounge-y.
The performers continue topless.
For a good forty minutes without significant change.
There are some different songs, but basically it’s all very much the same sixties swingers party “relaxed” vibe.
I really didn’t *get* this show,. I could go on describing it, with varying degrees of bemusement. I’m trying to avoid letting my puzzlement slip into outright contempt, because it was totally focused, and the performers were clearly committed to their arduous relaxed dancing, and it wasn’t “bad”, per se. Or objectionable (yes, the dynamic felt *a bit* queasy, but actually the whole seemed so mutual/consensual/whacked-out that it equally felt like finding it questionable might be our problem).
There ain’t half some blurb in the programme:
“iFeel2 displays the mutations, the evolutions, the metamorphosis that the individual and the social "bubbles" practice in real life. There is a real emerging need to once again ask the question: Why are we here, on this earth? And what value can we assign to the birth of life? Berrettini has been working with some texts and books from the German philosopher Peter Sloterdijk for many years. For iFeel2, he has selected You have to change your life (Du mußt dein Leben ändern), published in 2010. The current dance extends from a certain desire of acrobatic virtuosity to some more spiritual streams flirting with psychoanalysis, religion and the search of inner consciousness, the Jungian shadow. The performance is a mix of this multitrack life.”
Suffice it to say, none of that was remotely legible to me during the show. Moreover, I’m not particularly convinced that even if it had been, I’d have been all that into it.
The best two things that happen in iFeel2 (genuinely the worst title of anything ever), are that a) after forty (40) minutes, the hanging plants all start vibrating furiously. Nope. No idea. But it happens. And then, b) gradually a bloke, dressed as another plant, gets out of the largest hanging plant thing, unfolds a picnic table and proceeds to unpack a sort of ecological Happy Meal. The two dancers nick his burger and have a stab at feeding it to each other while still jigging about the place, but when he offers them his McEcoCoke or whatever, they don’t fancy it, so he goes round to the next biggest hangy plant thing and mimes giving it a sip.
And blackout!
Fin!
C’est tout!
Non. Je ne sais pas.
Watch the above trailer.
iFeel2 is basically that for an hour.
If you want to imagine it properly, in the Baltoscandal performance(s) at the Sport-Church (a venue I love very deeply, and not just because it’s a church that got converted into a sports hall in communist times and was thus renamed Sport-Church, but also because it was here that I saw Gisele Vienne’s I Apologize in 2008 – still perhaps my favourite theatre memory of all time...) it’s lighter than the above video suggests. The basketball hoop still stands at the back of the “stage”. You can see the court markings on the floor beyond the performance area.
From the ceiling hang seven models of plants of varying sizes at varying heights.
There is a six- by six-lantern lighting rig hung stage right, with alternating red, green and blue lights, calibrated to a cast warm, near-colourless glow over the stage (plus pretty, multi-coloured shadows. Yay!).
The music continues lounge-y.
The dancing continues lounge-y.
The performers continue topless.
For a good forty minutes without significant change.
There are some different songs, but basically it’s all very much the same sixties swingers party “relaxed” vibe.
I really didn’t *get* this show,. I could go on describing it, with varying degrees of bemusement. I’m trying to avoid letting my puzzlement slip into outright contempt, because it was totally focused, and the performers were clearly committed to their arduous relaxed dancing, and it wasn’t “bad”, per se. Or objectionable (yes, the dynamic felt *a bit* queasy, but actually the whole seemed so mutual/consensual/whacked-out that it equally felt like finding it questionable might be our problem).
There ain’t half some blurb in the programme:
“iFeel2 displays the mutations, the evolutions, the metamorphosis that the individual and the social "bubbles" practice in real life. There is a real emerging need to once again ask the question: Why are we here, on this earth? And what value can we assign to the birth of life? Berrettini has been working with some texts and books from the German philosopher Peter Sloterdijk for many years. For iFeel2, he has selected You have to change your life (Du mußt dein Leben ändern), published in 2010. The current dance extends from a certain desire of acrobatic virtuosity to some more spiritual streams flirting with psychoanalysis, religion and the search of inner consciousness, the Jungian shadow. The performance is a mix of this multitrack life.”
Suffice it to say, none of that was remotely legible to me during the show. Moreover, I’m not particularly convinced that even if it had been, I’d have been all that into it.
The best two things that happen in iFeel2 (genuinely the worst title of anything ever), are that a) after forty (40) minutes, the hanging plants all start vibrating furiously. Nope. No idea. But it happens. And then, b) gradually a bloke, dressed as another plant, gets out of the largest hanging plant thing, unfolds a picnic table and proceeds to unpack a sort of ecological Happy Meal. The two dancers nick his burger and have a stab at feeding it to each other while still jigging about the place, but when he offers them his McEcoCoke or whatever, they don’t fancy it, so he goes round to the next biggest hangy plant thing and mimes giving it a sip.
And blackout!
Fin!
C’est tout!
Non. Je ne sais pas.
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