A Fairy Tale Galactica
It touches me to write a text about a piece by and featuring Meg Stuart again after about 20 years. My engagement with cyborgs, monsters and the uncanny, which started then, has taken me in many directions and still remains an important point of reference. The many years of connection to Meg Stuart’s work naturally shape my view of the current piece, GLITCH WITCH. In her choreographies, Meg Stuart continues to work with fragmented bodies that convey the precarious and the fragile at the abyss of capitalist exploitation.
Three performers, who appear to be goddesses rather than witches, take the stage in GLITCH WITCH. Together with dancer Omagbitse Omagbemi and performer, musician and composer Mieko Suzuki, choreographer and dancer Meg Stuart has created an in-between world. There, they come together in an intensive exchange, drifting through the time spent together – 90 minutes for us, but a temporal arc from sunrise to sunset is being suggested on stage.
The wonderful set, designed by Nadia Lauro, in combination with the lighting design by Nico de Rooij, looks like an alien galaxy: truncated disco balls of various sizes are scattered across the stage, arranged like planets in an imaginary universe. The floor is covered with black particles. Silver reflections and focused white light radiate into the auditorium and create a surreal club atmosphere. An exquisitely composed soundtrack washes over everything – a vibrating crackling and whirring. This develops into a techno beat that permeates the entire room. The DJ booth is an integral part of the set.
Stuart, Omagbemi and Suzuki enter wearing mirrored glasses the size of visors in this cosmic arrangement that is initially only dimly lit. They have landed here and first have to explore the unknown terrain. They know each other well and are strangers to each other at the same time.
The movements of the three performers oscillate between individual freedom and a recurring flicker of harmony. Synchronicity emerges, leading to a fleeting exchange between the dancers – an instant of togetherness – which dissolves into different movement sequences just a moment later. Arms and hands are central connecting links throughout the piece – a familiar theme in Meg Stuart’s choreographies. The hands in relation to the body also function as glitches, as disruptions in the human code. They have a life of their own, trying both to connect and to strangle the other performer. Unpredictable. Much like the snakes on the head of the Medusa.
The performers standing on stage are strong and imposing, each with a wealth of experience from years of dance practice. Their movement material has been developed meticulously, their bodies bear the inscriptions of their individual dance histories. They know how handle them, they make them come alive and use their experiences to create a connection – both between each other and between light and sound, so as to end up in this version of the present.
Being the goddesses that they are, they throw their arms in the air and dance around a brightly spotlit disco ball – a sun at the heart of this in-between world. They move to the beat while attempting a hugging ritual. But here, too, the hands multiply and seem to detach themselves from the bodies. The three increasingly energised bodies are magnetically drawn to each other only to repel each other a moment later. The movements accelerate to the extreme – then: sound off.
So far, there has been searching – between the bodies, inside the bodies. The reality of the stage was being tested. Now – it seems to be noon in this galaxy – the goddesses are becoming more familiar with each other. “I am glad we have this scene to get to know you”, Meg Stuart says to Omagbitse Omagbemi. As they try on new outfits, a profane chat unfolds about favourite animals, dresses, past roles – and ageing.
Everything is different after this scene. The desperation of searching has vanished, the three of them have found each other. They stand on the balls, raise their arms – bent, jerky, puppet-like, but as a unit. Mieko Suzuki and Meg Stuart come together at the DJ booth, which now acts as a large control console that might influence the events of the worlds. With the scratching, their pas de deux develops an interactive force, as if the dancers could create new worlds through sound. The setting sun becomes many, and the disco balls magically send their rays into the darkness of the stage and the auditorium. The end is open, the journey of the goddesses continues.
Andrea Salzmann works as an artist in the field of performative art. In her installations and live performances, she tackles socio-political issues from a queer-feminist perspective, calling alleged entities such as national borders, patriarchal structures and the capitalist world order into question. In addition, she teaches at the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna in the Department of Art and Time | Performance. salzmann.klingt.org