Anna Kozonina. Almost no festival today is complete without performances re-inscribing dance history. And since history is contested territory, historical narratives want to be heard and included in the dominant one. Moving in November presented two shows that critically addressed dance history.
Surprisingly, the most successful, in my opinion, turned out to be a performance that is as traditional in form as possible and as far as possible from the aesthetic experiments of the new dance.
Her solo performance, an extension of a documentary movie The Art of Movement made in collaboration with filmmaker Andreas Bolm, resembled a traditional dramatic show based on interviews and archival materials rather than a dance piece. Though there was almost no dance in the performance, except for rare movements of arms, sharp and sudden, it was a piece of great bodily work.
Though modern dance history is a commonplace topic in European experimental choreography nowadays, it usually touches upon very western and established names like Martha Graham or Isadora Duncan thus gaining benefit from their fame and symbolic value. So it was valuable to see a piece addressing modern dance in Eastern Europe which had a much more politically intense story throughout the 20th century.
Wearing a lush multi-layered skirt, long nails, and drag-like makeup, and smeared with white powder, Chaignaud tried to incorporate in his dance several historical figures whose connections are not at all obvious and therefore intriguing. Queering or challenging a historical canon has recently become a solid strategy in dance.
