Until We Breathe; Gyula Cserepes – Bea Egyed, Atelier 21220: Late Night Show Review

The question ”what is dance?” first came up decades ago, at the very beginning of the 1960s, but it is still lurking around globally. Choreographer Gyula Cserepes has already focused in his previous piece, Selfy on the interaction between performer and beholder by inviting the audience on stage. As a tool, he appealed to an unusual, but very friendly and decent community game, namely an old children’s folk game. At the center of his interest were the possibilities of equality between each person being present, simply generating a state of freedom and release.

In his new piece, Late Night Show, having Bea Egyed as a creative and performing partner, the body, physical endurance and a state of distraction emerge as fundamental issues. The two dancers stand naked and motionless in the two corners of the audience arranged in a circle, and slowly start shaking their bodies. It takes a few minutes until the movement of their bodies is observed, and the audience falls silent. Shaking and its unlimited ways of variation start to lead the whole choreography. Based on the movement vocabulary, which implements seemingly uncoordinated gestures, the question whether it was improvisation or not is left open. The emphasis is on the atmosphere they create.

Two vibrating bodies situated in two opposing sides of the dancefloor gradually fill up the space with extreme energies, such as exhaustion, exasperation, distortion, loss of equilibrium and sanity. Once they get dressed into sparkling casual clothes mixed with sporty ones, and take a round in front of the audience with their abruptly shaking bodies, their moves become wilder and wilder, more and more intense. The rhythm of the bodies enhances together with the techno music. At the end, they reach a state of wandering that intermingles with intentions of self-depression and self-mortification.

The stage feels like a ring where two bodies fight with themselves, and when they suddenly touch each other or go close to a spectator, some kind of relief spreads around. But it lasts only for seconds. Late Night Show is another phase of attempting interaction, based on the verges of bodily sensations and physical state. If you entered the ring, you might have felt the vibes.

What comes next, Atelier 21220?

Dorottya Albert

Click here to read the portrait of Atelier 21200.

Details:

Creators & performers: Beáta Egyed, Gyula Cserepes. Light: Ints Plavnieks. Music: Januš Aleš Luznar. Costume: Judit Kis. MU Theatre, 06/04/2018.