Alina Belyagina

ОБiЙМИ (hold me hold me hold)

Two dancers, hair, voice, one live musician, landscape. We are open for the technical adaptation, if you don't have a possibility, we can change technical needs. The work was inspired by my research "Transgenderism in shamanism" and by the book "Can the monster speak" by P.Preciado. I use sentences from the book to confront the audience. I put there the idea of "fragility" and metaphoric image of it from "Stalker" Tarkovsky. The work was produced during the war time in my origin country (Ukraine) and I address the idea of fragility to the audience. I play with the monstrosity and I put the ironic mood there asking provocative questions.
Merging together the real and the imaginary, two dancers together with the moving images and with soundscape that amalgamate together the electronic frequencies of the reality of a videogame with church singing with house music create a space for transgressive experience that holds a potentiality for becoming the imaginary, making the imaginary palpable. Indefinable as either human or animal bodies transmute into either monstrous animalistic beasts extending into the technological devices like microphone and fog machine. The transformational ecology of the space created by the performance holds together the dichotomy of various contradictions: the simultaneity of the somatic experience of the real and the virtual, empowerment that originates from vulnerability. This confusion also manifests itself in the relationship between the performers that cannot be grasped with any particular verbal equivalent. One of the most striking images of the performance is a scene where two bodies fall into each other: when one body falls, the other - catches tenderly and with care, till the moment when both bodies are woven together and one becomes a landscape for the other. The bestiary of sensual, delirious, and rebellious bodies climaxes into a street dance battle accompanied by raw theatrical gestures like fog machine and screaming into a microphone.