Timeout Burnout

The performance of the dancer Lukáš Bobalik and stage director and dramaturge Maja Hriešik deals with the very current issue of burnout that affects people across generations and can affect anyone – including an artist. Bobalik often collaborates with the creative artists of his generation and with older choreographers. Such workload can prove borderline, even if it may seem that a twenty-year-old does not yet have to experience burnout. Nonetheless, the pace with which dancers throw themselves after graduation into the daily cycle of life of a freelance artist can make even an older matador spin and can be an adrenaline sport. It gave Bobalik the experience of states of elaborate weightlessness, when a one loses the drive to carry on creating. Through a tennis match or practice, the dancer demonstrates during the performance the path to mental and physical exhaustion.

The scene affects most dynamically and functionally the action in the tennis game. (…) There are four surfaces in the space – metal mesh, which the dancer uses to the full extent. He moves the rebound surfaces, which turn into a cage, with Bobalik wrestles with at the end. He tries to create space for himself in it. Yet it is virtually a Sisyphean task, for he must maintain his pace, speed, dynamics and overall movement technique. Bobalik alternates the rhythm of the game. The dance performance is controlled by tennis technique, as well as the graciousness associated with dance.

Marek Godovič: NuDanceFest in the Time of Corona: Closer to Each Other or Closer from Each Other [NuDanceFest v čase korony: Bližšie k sebe či bližšie od seba]. In MLOKi  [online]. 25. 9. 2020. Available at: https://mloki.sk/nudancefest-v-case-korony-blizsie-k-sebe-ci-blizsie-od-seba/