Wonderful performance yesterday!
Grand Finale is like a live study of the concept of dance through geographies, ages, interpersonal and, more dominantly, social dimensions. It shows dance in its amazing complexity of styles, functions and by-products with all the contact points through which we, humans connect to it...
Dance in the West, dance in the East, dance even further in the East...
Dance as an ancient rite, dance becoming a social ritual in the modern times...
Dance as a way to connect and to kill connection...
Dance to express, dance to suppress; dance as a release of frustrations, dance as an organised and eventually forced form of fitting into/cooperating with the present order of society...
Dance as aggression, dance as tenderness...
Dance as mourning and dance as a way to turn blind eyes to the corpses left behind by an unhealthy or war-struck society, pretending that some rainbow-coloured bubbles combined with cheesy music are enough to put everything right...
Dance as a magnetic force that pulls you to join in the crowd and overtakes your senses, dance as a source of humour and dance as finding comfort and compassion in an intimate relationship...
Dance as a genuine source of and expression of joy, dance as life and dance as an attempt to resuscitate...
So many perspectives, so many thoughts - amazing and inspiring!
Then comes the post-show talk with Hofesh and some of the dancers – and at the end of the day, you cannot decide if the performance or the talk was more enjoyable. Hofesh is as philosophical in his speaking as in his choreography, playing with well-known concepts of cultural studies such as reality, objectivity–subjectivity, cultural filters, etc. Questioning everything and the opposite of everything, continuously observing and challenging himself as an artist and a civil person.
So engaging – and the thing I liked about it the most: he does it in the most unpretentious way. I'm always impressed when I see people who have really done great things – who are, like Hofesh, among the most defining personalities in a certain field – to be modest and focusing on their work/creation/helping a situation instead of on their ego. Respect – and happy that I could be there.
Today is the company’s last performance at the end of their artistic residency in Luxembourg – go and watch Grand Finale if you can, post-show talk follows as yesterday.