Upon entering, Wild Life Take Away Station has been going on for four hours. Two performers - Diego Agulló and Ria Higler, a young man and an old woman - stroll through the Central Museum's project studio like drowsy zombies. They are pale and muscle-naked, apart from their weird slippers and wigs. The two lie sprawled across the couch, trudging around, having a drink, dropping or crawling against each other. Vacuous acts, performed with smug faces. Wild Life Take Away Station is a meditative experience: you are immersed in a moving still life. There are hardly any fleshed-out characters or a clear story, but it remains captivating.
"In my art, I always try to subvert logic," choreographer told Ibrahim Quraishi me in a previous interview. "If a work of art is useless, with no clear meaning, as a viewer you are given the freedom to decipher it in your own way."
Thus, everything and everyone in Wild Life Take Away Station becomes part of a seemingly random composition. Throughout the performance, the distinction between players, objects and spectators seems to slowly disappear. In an alienating, loud soundscape, two voices can be heard, sometimes barely followable through rattling city sounds, ferocious noise and crackling noises. Sometimes in conversation - arguing, questioning or reassuring - but more often immersed in dreamy monologues about their impossible love.
The room smells of smoked eel, sweat, wet hay, dusty feathers and smouldering theatre lamps. In the centre is a coarse wooden dining table, strewn with food scraps and half-empty plates, a broken bread and glasses of red wine. Like a classic still life. Perplexed, a handful of visitors try to make their way through the kitchy living room furniture, trying not to get in the way too much. It makes little difference: the performers look right through you.
The two characters look deeply tragic, but their hopeless looks and raw naked bodies give everything they do a witty undertone. The extreme length and slowness give all their actions, no matter how small or banal, a new, mysterious charge every time. So you keep watching. Eventually, the woman grabs her partner by his flaccid member, he gropes her elderly breasts. Both wearing garden gloves. "Auf wiedersehen" - they whisper to each other.
The original version of Wild Life Take Away Station dates back to 2009, when it lasted a whopping 24 hours, non-stop. The version on Springdance is limited to (only) five. After about an hour, I suddenly notice that the soundscape restarts. And realise that I have lost all sense of time.
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