Three girls

Treatment of Remembering (Sabina Bočková, Johana Pocková, Inga Zotova-Mikshina). Photo: Kamil Hauptmann.

Author Silvia Hristova

They dare to crawl out into their own remembrance. They smile in the weightlessness. They twinkle and enjoy, and feel. They celebrate a world of senses that seemed so normal once. So ordinary. The laughter, the joy.

And then the fear.

It takes them slowly by surprise. It intensifies. It gradually transforms their faces. Stunning fear. Petrifying. Just seeing it makes you shiver. Your mind cannot help but wonder. What an unearthly force could draw so much fear to a face?

They shout.

Then there is nothing.

The resounding silence of nothingness. Dissolving, falling apart. Three humans trying to pave their way back into the memory of another world. All is lost. All is still.

And in the stillness, there is the impulse of a body. Rapid. Searching for moves to justify its own existence. Moving timidly into the memory. Moving into a world where it can touch and feel, and smell. Where it can see, where it can hear. Where it can feel with its skin. Where things are cold, or warm. Where there is texture. Where there is pleasure. Where there is life.

And there is pain.

And there is death.

The world brings rain. Rain brings relief. It touches the skin. It pours down the faces. It's cold. It's wet. Bodies are freezing. They're shaking. The cold shatters everything.

And it brings back life.

It brings back feeling.

And it brings back being human.

Three girls in a posthuman world.

EDITORIAL NOTE:
This text is written as part of an international writing workshop entitled Alternative Formats, aimed at developing alternative ways of writing about dance. The workshop was a collaboration between Taneční aktuality and Performing Criticism Globally and took place during Move Fest Ostrava 2021, kindly supported by EEA Grants, and the resulting texts were written in response to productions at this festival. Silvia Hristova’s text Three girls responds to PocketArt’s performance Treatment of Remembering.