Soft Spot

In the performance – or rather a performative event Soft Spot, dancers Martina Hajdyla Lacová and Soňa Ferienčíková under the direction of Hungarian choreographer Adrienn Hód explore the fragility of their own existence. It enables the audience to sit in the space in the form of an arena and a degree of freedom in filling the space. A kind of theatre in a theatre is then part of the performance where static observers can simultaneously examine the regrouping of the audience, or rather the extent to which the audience enters the space of the visually limited personal zone. It isn’t until the very end that the dancers reveal their faces which is also a resolute negation of the previous depersonalisation.

If approaching them as objects and the stage as an exhibition space, a viewer could acquire an impression that anything is possible. Speaking body is principally a metaphor; to feel confronted, our instinct needs eye contact – with a face, or even merely a mask. Yet it is movement as a means of communication that is advanced as one of the themes by the female artists. It is an eternal inspiration with always more to be discovered within. Gesture, posture and movement that stop at the threshold of incomprehensibility and intelligibility, do not create language in the true sense of the word; choreography cannot be read in the traditional sense. What is possible, however, is to let ourselves be invited into the common space that the movement and powerful visual component create.

Lucie Kocourková: Soft Spot – Uncovering, Destabilising, Sharing [Soft Spot – odkrývaní, znejišťování, sdílení]. In Opera+ [online]. 18. 3. 2022. Available at: https://operaplus.cz/soft-spot-odkryvani-znejistovani-sdileni/