A week before Mary Magdalene Festival in 1518, Frau Troffea left her house through the courtyard and, unexpectedly for herself, began to dance frantically in one of the narrow Strasbourg streets. She danced all day and late into the evening, and even all night long. On the third day of this crazy dancing, she was at the stage of extreme exhaustion, shoes soaked in blood, but she could not stop. Finally, her contagious dance swept through the city, causing a dance epidemic that brought about many victims.
Diving into Frau Troffea’s story, the performer talks about his own experience of traumatic obsession and relentless search for freedom that seems painful and fatal. Through the shock caused by separation from his home and his past, absorbed by his forced emigration from Belarus and the search for himself, he dissolves completely in the attractive Berlin rave culture. The magnetism of techno brings in the external and internal transformation of the party-goer: the new freedom of communication and movement he experiences under significant dopings-driven stress. Speeding up, the performer loses and regains the quality of movement, observes bodily reactions, captures critical heartbeat indicators. This action, both physiological and poetic, reveals various artistic dimensions. Through intense body ceremony, a story of an entire country's disease and the obsessive search for the cure of freedom is told.
Creative
Idea, director: Sergey Shabohin
Idea, performing: Igor Shugaleev
Choreographed: Agnieszka Kryst
Music: Mikita Bubashkin
Visual: Aleksandra Kononchenko
Producer: Marina Dashuk