Ecdysis

  • Ecdysis

The matter of the performance "Ecdysis" ("Wylinka") is what exists between the three performers. The way in which they are together. Foil is the beginning. Its presence binds the performers, assigns tasks.

Thanks to it they can live out the experience of having a common skin. Eventually, movement takes over this function. Movement allows the borders between what is mine and what is on the outside fade. It is the movement which creates a common tempo and shape.

The starting point of my work on this performance was my interest in the subject of the end of the world and disintegration. One of the first images which began this process was a photo of a sculpture by Maurizio Cattelan from 2008. It portrayed nine bodies lying under a white material. Wojtek Pustoła showed it to me. This photo introduced foil into my work. During rehearsals I realized that it is not death or closure in their literal meaning which are important but the dramatic transitions between different stages in life. We do not truly die under the influence of life experience and the world does not end. We gradually learn to act in the new order which finally becomes a new world.

(Maria Stokłosa)

All that built us, is no longer here.
There will be no old furniture dust, no reminiscences of grandparents, our exes, our mothers, aunts nor kids. No stories about a made-up performance in which the audience finds themselves on a beach, in the mountains, at the stadium or on a different planet.
Everything appeared during rehearsals, sometimes for a longer period of time. We walked this road. And we continued along it. Once in a while a new world appeared – it erupted like a dormant volcano leaving behind cinders and a fertile ground.
The remains linger on – the matter which remembers something but is usually wrong, it remembers wrong, it cannot go back so it pushes forwards into a different version of itself. Into a different body. Usually uncomfortable but tamable.
So what now? When the battlefield is filled with rolls of plastic so used-up they seem to hide the genealogy of the events?
We are identifying the terrain now. From the beginning, even though, of course, we have rehearsed this so many times.
We examine, we build, we set ourselves free. And once again.

(Wojtek Ziemilski)

The principles of "Ecdysis" do not say much about the world being created. Until now they only provoke it. (…) foil is the only object functioning in the performance and organizing its following levels: scenographic, choreographic and dramaturgic. Its complex function results from one of the basic rules of working on a performance – a search of change in space and actions and rather than esthetic value. The movement of wrapped up bodies imprinted itself on the inner side of the foil, turning it into a substantial document of the created choreography. The foil cocoon was a side effect of movement – a surplus which had to be rehabilitated .

After every rehearsal the foil remains were collected in order to be reused. They were spread out in the whole space, pressed into solids, used to wrap up individual objects and on the floor a relief compositions were being created. Finally, the recycled foil appears as a flattened landscape, spread out on the floor. The bodies of the dancers are incorporated into it and from it they are to be emancipated.

This is how the idea of a choreographic structure, crucial when discussing this performance, began to appear and was shown from various perspectives. In the sculpture everything moves everything and everything influences everything – regardless of whether we talk about the performers or the object.  

Photo documentation:

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