Thursday, June 4, 2015

Faki: Untitled

Some performances don't ask for criticism - they just need someone to write down what happened.

You could pick out stylistic or technical elements of Elisa Arteta's dance experiment Untitled - some kind of hypnotic, repetitive rhythm of feet-on-floor, the artist's address to us also seeming to tumble along perpetually. The fact that the seating was in-the-round.

You could pick these out - but it would be irrelevant. This work, like any political work, is about you.

Photo: Merima Salkić

~

A grey, flourescent-lit room. Arteta, dressed in sweatpants and a pink hoodie, warms up as the audience enters, before gently evolving this into her 'work' - literally, a simple dancer's exercise in leading with body parts and weight-transfer. She begins to speak a text - a response to Judith Butler, some loosely connected thoughts surrounding her 'political body', and the various ways in which it may be formed or employed.

Then she says "you can leave when you want". And she keeps working.

And now, it's over to you.