Emerging critics

The body gives simplicity, resistance, or surprise. The mind enables understanding, confusion, or poetry. The emotional responses appear on the way through triggers and memories. Interacting or choreographing evokes all of these parts together. 

A stream of words and thoughts about the KoresponDance festival happening in Žďár nad Sázavou in July 2022.

Dear Maria Nurmela, I watched the piece Closer to the Wild Heart, which you choreographed and performed, at this year’s KoresponDance festival in Žďár nad Sázavou. To my surprising delight… 

There are two dance productions that made me realise that the KoresponDance festival is not only about presenting the newest developments in dance and choreography.

- I don’t know where I am. Can you only use this phrase when heading somewhere?
A soft voice is guiding me. She never panics. She has no physical body but still has been in more places than you can ever imagine. 

Rarely have I put my head back so often during a festival visit. My eyes tried to follow the movements of the performers as closely as possible, but in the case of this festival, they really took on acrobatic challenges...

Three girls sitting on the ground. Three girls exploring their memories. Surrounded by emptiness. Indulging in the impulses of their bodies. Rapid, then fluid. 

                                soft against rough   clashing views

                          of tin and greenery  

                hideous tubes and sumptuous plants

        arranged in a bizarre scenery

Do you remember our backyard? Do you remember my hug? All are gone now. 

There is nothing living in this room, only us, resilient furniture. At best, we are the props of your daily routine: practical, and comforting.

I am wearing a flower crown.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                           

Many people, a barefooted woman and a man inviting me inside the building. I have my shoes on. How did it happen – I am a spectator.

Interpreting art in novel styles and forms is a delicate matter – almost as delicate as creating it.  When film began to earn its status as an autonomous art form, critics emphasised its difference with theatre and its ability to do what the latter could not, mirroring more recent approaches to screendance...

Oqda, which in Arabic means knot, is not only the title of this dance and acrobatics piece by Etta Ermini Dance Theatre but an invitation to witness three remarkably skilled and charismatic performers embark on a highly spirited journey of embodied intercultural dialogue.

Hofesh Shechter’s Clowns premiered in 2016 and this adaptation on screen for BBC’s ‘Performance Live’ strand Program was released already in 2018 before any remote idea of dystopian viruses and lockdowns.