„Dada von Bzdülöw Theatre came at Reflexfest with a choreographic performance named “Invisible Duets”, which embodies some fragments of a couples’ story. As the name of the Polish theatre says, it is a Dadaist piece that uses a provocative nonsense and experimental music (by Mikołaj Trzaska). As the performance goes by, you can expect anything to happen, as you see that some different elements are randomly cutting in on stage.
A white screen is placed on the left side of the stage on which the random verses from Grzegorz Kwiatkowski’s poems are projected, from time to time, that are related to the theme – the relationship between a man and a woman. At first, we detect the dialogue of the bodies and only then the text. As the projected text slides on the screen and talks about what men think about women one of the artists is having a solo dance connected to the text and then the other way around. The body language “speaks” in a variety of modes, from movement as meaning, to abstract expression of mood or narrative.
On stage, a man (Leszek Bzdy) and a woman (Katarzyna Chmielewska) come in contact, and then the lights open on the couple that performs a dance that reveals a daily routine. There are moments when you feel like the performers will go intimate, but their contact is so subtle that it can hardly be apprehended as intimate.
It seems like the couple is getting cold and the boredom is already installed. When people get bored they like to experience different things to see what they like or do not anymore – for example to put whipped cream in and on some rubber boots and then wear them and lick it off. Along with whipped cream, coffees and nakedness an audio monologue comes along, a text about what the director thinks of the duo’s long-time career, about their relationship, about men, women…
The couple dances through the performance until they end up in each other’s clothes – the gender-switch is represented by him wearing a dress and her wearing a suit.
As the artists said at the meeting with the audience after the performance they “tried to find positive aspects in this disintegrated space.”
Emilia Ostace, www.reflexfest.ro
