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Ethics Embracing Aesthetics
I have been witnessing Jasna Vinovrški’s authorial development in fact from the very beginning, since Mittelwelle AFC and Which Club? onwards, attending the events of Dance Week Festival and Platform HR in Zagreb, where she regularly performed. I cannot say these early pieces sparked inclination towards ingrained choreographic concepts or that we immediately clicked. On the contrary, they often quietly disturbed me, forcing me to think what was it that bothered me and why. Which nevertheless seemed better than having no view at all, because that would mean I was in no way affected by the stage creation. And I was affected even more than I would have liked it.
At first it all seemed much too obvious, as though they offered little that would lure me to explore the material into more detail. Everything seemed evident in itself, clearly established, focused on one thematic point, carried out with precision. I almost secretly desired a spot, a blemish, derailment from the system that would obfuscate this clarity. Little by little, Jasna Vinovrški’s work to me became a synonym for a combination of the media of dance and theatre, the simplicity of form, with the use of speech, objects and irony as ongoing elements. And a signal of my own acquiescence. And then it suddenly clicked. Everything came into place: the individual mechanism was backed by a carefully built network of choreographic strategies and stage signage, intertwining it with previous works and unravelling a poetics both complex and powerful. Unpretentious form which Jasna Vinovrški tactfully and shrewdly opts for gives her supple manipulative space for much valuable tiny articulations and numerous subtleties in terms of meaning, as well as development and tryouts of subtle actions and skills, contributing to the many facets and textures of the piece. With this she also consents to the possible lack of flow on the stage, ruptures in optics and viewing
crises, taking them as a chance for reflexive and self- reflexive detachment, ironic commentary or criticism against certain social anomalies, lucidly avoiding moralisation and provoking response in the audience which can subsequently, as public, spark real, off-stage changes.
Performativity
Simplification of the theatrical mechanism in relation to the performative form and spatial relations, as well as focusing on several choreographic markers which all contribute to the linear flow of either the entire piece, or smaller, separate segments which then, in the thematic context, comprise the final version of the performance, make it possible for the author to commit to working on the performance, i.e. performing and performativity itself. I would just like to stress that I am focusing on the performances I saw over the years, including, in addition to the already mentioned, Modal Verbs, Lady Justice and Ensemble, which approach performativity from an embodied character and a staged situation, i.e. from the internal perspective of the representational complex. Two pieces which I haven’t managed to see, Under Construction and Live to Tape, a Still Moving Talk Show, examine performativity in relation to the performance medium, questioning presence, “the production of presence” (H. U. Gumbrecht), and the scope and meaning of the role, i.e. the embodiment of character. Stepping away from bequeathed conventions of theatre, the dancer’s or, more accurately, the dancing body performs even the embodied character, it doesn’t narrate, simulate or assume the action and doesn’t substitute it with a sign, but rather performs actual physical work. Work on performance implies work on the chosen tactics of performing modes during the performative event, testing and fine-tuning of one’s own performative strengths and capacities depending on the specific performance context. Apart from paying attention to performative material and being on the stage,
especially when seemingly nothing is happening, which demands the performer’s focus on the impact of their presence to the material and the viewers, including raising awareness and controlling states, emotions, evocativeness, intentionality etc., there is also performance work as an independent entity which eludes the performer’s steering and emanates meanings combined with the performance context, another thing the performer must balance with. This was more evidently expressed in performances which include the audience moment, such as Staying Alive and Lady Justice, either in supporting the performer complete her task with kinaesthetic empathy or accepting the role in arranging props around the performative space, whereas in others, Modal Verbs for instance, also acknowledging that the audience recognise commonplaces, pays more attention to voice posturing, the body’s stand on the expressed content, synergy of speech and movement, and other similar elements.
Language
Linguistic and complementary gestural and mimic codes are the focus of Jasna Vinovrški’s work just as much as movement. From the dance aspect as an expressly physical art, the use of language and speech as its individual evidence is not disparate, moreover the production of speech can be seen as crossing the boundaries of the body and expanding into space. A word uttered by way of the speech apparatus vibrates across the space, taking it. At the same time, detaching itself from the body, the word belongs neither to the physical nor to the external space, but is, rather, distributed among them. This sheds light on the speaker as a mediator and the word as an object realised in space like movement, entering the field of choreographic research. Because of this gap, speech reveals itself as the otherness of language – which as a socially authorised system on a subconscious level plays a role in forming meaning – because the production of speech includes different linguistic errors, slips of the tongue, pauses, wrong accents etc.,
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