Like raindrops along a car window on a drizzling day, this is how you can move. Softly, hesitantly, but also inevitably moving in one direction, the dancers of HER project in Everything falls dramatic roll across the stage of Utrecht's Stadsschouwburg. As if they no longer have bones, but have turned into soft balls. That is transformation you come to the theatre for. Especially when the outside world is no place to hang around for too long.
On Thursday 14 May, the 14th edition of Spring Performing Arts Festival opened with a Korean performance that, especially in the first part, was movingly beautiful. Choreographer Sung Im Her shows two sides of her work in Double Bill. The first part is most comprehensive in its sketch of soft and fluid transformation to industrial tautness, which takes over after the interval in a sometimes predictable fake world of TikTok and K-Pop. The exhaustion of the dancers is real and palpable, but it may well be that, for seasoned dance fans, it is all a bit passé already.
Public-friendly
Artistic director Grzegorz Reske deliberately chose this audience-friendly opening performance. The hall of the city theatre is not only full of dance connoisseurs and enthusiasts, diplomatic representatives from all over the world are also present. Many Asian visitors too, as Spring is hosting the Asia-Europe Cultural Festival this year. It is a brave attempt at global cooperation. Heartening, too, of course, but it was quite difficult to keep the real world out. It was clear that people preferred not to talk about whatever war or crime. Unlike at the Venice Biennale or the Eurovision Song Contest in Vienna, everyone wanted above all to celebrate connection.
Heartwarming was the ovation for Sharon Dijksma. After her opening speech in the interval between the two Double Bill performances, the Utrecht mayor had to leave immediately to guard against new riots by fascist squads in Loosdrecht. She let it be known that she loved being able to be alone with beauty for a while this evening. The audience applauded in agreement.
Barricades
There will be those who even now believe that art should be on the barricades to save the world, but perhaps we can also derive something else from this encounter between Asia and Europe. As director Reske cited an ancient wisdom, saying that in a world of constant chaos, art offers an opportunity not to move with it, but to stand still, rest and breathe.
Spring is here. Spring Performing Arts Festival is the opening of the festival season. Would it indeed be possible, as with this Korean ‘Double Bill’, to take a break, and provide space for necessary reflection?
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