Shakespeare in chor

‘Shakespeare’ in chor. Erik Makohon, Agnieszka Bednarz-Tyran and Yelyzaveta Tereshonok at the Krakow Dance Theatre. Written by Linda Wardal, participant of the Dance Critics Residency workshop at Cricoteka.

As the audience enters the auditorium, a woman lies on the floor. Dressed in white, with a white bouquet of flowers in her hands, she stands up and walks across the stage and soon emerges on top of what looks like a tower. She looks off into the distance. A second woman joins her. The scenery is familiar, the women waiting for their lovers to return home. We all know these stories. This time, however, no man arrives, and the women on stage seem stuck in their own trajectories. After circling each other for a while, they stand together, their backs to each other, creating an almost motionless image in which only a hand is slowly arranged in a dramatic gesture. When one of them decides to walk away, the other falls to the ground, beginning destructive movements with her hips. There is an inescapable bond between them, a dependence on each other.

The movements that follow are very athletic, strong, explosive and expressive, both artists performing them with great determination. The dancers begin to touch each other's faces. This sequence is desperately and increasingly quickly repeated. It made me think of an angry coffee machine that could explode at any moment. As the duet unfolds, the reference to the scene from Pina Bausch's Café Müller, in which a woman repeatedly falls into a man's arms, each time falling and bouncing back up. The difference is that there is no man here. In this context, Shakespeares is an observation of what happens when the main male characters are removed from the story. The secondary female characters are on stage alone, but are they writing their own story, or are they victims of their own misfortune and madness?

As the programme reads, the performance draws on three female characters from Shakespeare's classic plays - Ophelia, Lady Macbeth and Juliet - who have repeatedly been described as mad and hysterical. At the beginning of the performance, an explanatory text reads: ‘What if madness is a strategy for freedom?’. Choreographer Erik Makohon explored the theme by experimenting with moving different parts of the body. He was inspired by the work of Polish visual artist Aneta Grzeszykowska, who uses optical illusions in her works. Her films, shown in the lobby before the show, date from early 2010, but my thoughts wander to even earlier avant-garde works such as Maya Deren's experimental films from the 1940s. The black and white set design and video projections on stage further emphasise this.

In front of the viewer are two geometric constructions covered with many thin strips, so that the dancers, if they wish, can only be partially visible. The female performers enter and emerge from the scenery, creating absurd and effective illusions of a defragmented body. At one point, the head appears detached from the rest of the body, and one arm moves freely back and forth until it is underneath. The movement of the body on stage through optical illusions creates a funny and absurd mix of three female characters. It is interesting that two female performers act out the life stories of three characters, and the illusion effect allows one body to be seen as a collection of many. This suggests looking at one person's problems through the lens of another's struggles. However, the theme of female madness did not appeal to me.

The female dancers fall into the scenery in different ways, sometimes being sucked in by it, other times seeming to immerse themselves in it. This can be interpreted as choosing madness over sanity, which is a woman's right. But does it give freedom, as the description suggests? I see madness, but I don't see freedom.

The stares are intense and strong, mostly directed away from the audience. The situation changes when one person steps on another and looks down on them, as if they were the victim. There are signs of madness on stage, but it never really gets ugly or changes my view of the characters from the traditional versions of their story. The quality of the movement is impressive, acrobatic and exhausting, but what is behind the madness as a possible strategy? I still don't know.