DANCE: Igor Shyshko & Albina Vakhitova
PERFORMANCE: Elke Van Campenhout
MUSIC: NEXCYIA
Spell is a ritualistic performance that was born out of a long-term research on somatic forms of resistance and the reappropriation of patterns of fear and mourning. In a kind of no man’s land two bodies abandon themselves to a repetitive struggle for release. Letting go of the burden of the homeland, of memory, of gender norms and dire political struggle, they attempt over and over again crossover, to arrive into another existential reality.
Igor Shyshko and Albina Vakhitova go in dialogue with the incantatory text, performed by Elke Van Campenhout, the ‘spell’ that holds the space for them to hold cliche and pain, joy and release, ambiguity and struggle. Spell does not produce ready-made political messages, but unfolds a multi-layered existential field of uncertainty, of what it is to live, and work, and relate today. As immigrants, as cultural workers, as magical beings.
Choreographer Igor Shyshko has developed a unique movement language in his work, balancing between ‘natural’ choreography, ritual movement, and meditative practice. For Malus, he collaborated with a classical opera singer on an introspective choreography with yogic and transformative elements. In The Box, he let external conditions dictate his body’s form as he remained confined in a cube for twelve hours. In that performance, Shyshko subjected himself to enforced stillness, distancing himself from the frantic pace of modern life. In Spell, he takes the opposite approach: embracing the relentless whirl of daily life as a path towards transformative exhaustion.
