Out of Context – for Pina

The dancers enter the stage from the auditorium. They are shrouded in red blankets and gradually take off their clothes until to the underwear. Except a few microphones the stage is empty. We can hear sounds of nature – animals, rustle, cracking. And some electronic beats. The dancers stick their tongues, roll their eyes, tremble, shake, twist toes and fingers. Out of Context is starting.

The production of Out of Context – for Pina is exceptional not only in the context of Alain Platel’s work but also in the context of contemporary dance theatre. While earlier Platel created choreographies on great musical works, here he worked out a given (musical) context, with a dedication to Pina Bausch, one of the most inspiring and most important female choreographers of the second half of the past century.

The dancers are themselves, they do not present any characters, they physically present the mental and emotional world of man who perceives himself and the world around him with an extreme amount of sensibility. We may use words such as excess, hysteria, exaltation, abnormality, but there is always the questioning of the formativeness given by the prevailing political and social discourses.

The dancers move between animalism and sexuality in order to use their physical expression to express and mediate to the viewer the energy of unconscious and unprocessed conflicts. Intimacy, pleasure, pain, rejection, hopes, desire is not portrayed linearly or by the story, and they cannot be expressed by words – they are fragments of words, fragments of sounds and separate movements. Out of Context is a communication of bodies reaching the extreme; it is a physical therapy of the conflict between pain and joy.

The motion material of the choreography is based on dyskinesia (the voluntary movements disorder) and dystonia (involuntary movement with abnormal muscle tonus). The choreography is also a mixture of various minor movements such us movements of mouth, rattling of teeth, various grimaces, turning of the head, trembling of arms, unnatural twisting of legs or shaking. Such “abnormal” animal movements are set in the contrast with the modern dance choreography with persiflage of dance from pop-song clips and extracts of songs which terrorize us in radios and music TVs, forcing us the image of how love, sex and intimacy should look like. Originally orthopaedic therapist, Alain Platel is not only a genial choreographer who, together with dancers, examines, provokes and eventually creates a new movement dictionary and expression, but also a critic of society and a tireless defender of humanity and the “different” view on man. It disturbs the stereotypical thinking and perception, and it also places him among the most impressive contemporary art creators.
Martina Vanayová