March is associated with the colour brown, April with light blue, May with green. Is it possible to write about a performance that balances on the boundary of two worlds while acutely sensing this very boundary between what can be shown and what is concealed? We use sentences to delimit and enclose. We are aware that we are enclosing something yet our words open our gates of perception to the unknown that lies behind.
A woman on stage. Brown dress, brown shoes, blue eyes. Lilacs are in bloom out in the yard. Movements. Hard, and soft. Starting, stopping. More precisely bolting and halting. I could say all is silent, but it is not true for I can hear the breathing. And every once in a while fragments of music can be heard from outside. The intrusion of the outside world compels me to look at what I see not as a performance but as part of life even if at the given moment my part is only to contemplate, to observe. The space is somehow mapped by the rhythm of breathing, the pauses, and the focusing regard. Or perhaps on the contrary, these hide something from personal experience, I wonder, but the next minute the music starts playing. Rhythmic, floating, minimalist noise structures flood the stage and open up the space. I can feel distinctly that I have become involved: music plays from all directions. From this point onward inner and outer worlds are no longer hermetically isolated. The rhythm of breathing, the stops, the focusing regard makes the dancer fragile, frail and very lovable. As she stands there looking out, I imagine we are looking at each other, I can sense her attention. She is almost looking at me. But no; and neither does she looks at anyone else. Yet she looks so attentively that all of a sudden I feel like looking at the world through her eyes. Perhaps she is looking at nothing, which I long for as much as I dread. Or perhaps she is groping about in her memories, and she sees a large walnut tree, a table underneath, milk on the table glittering, the landscape ablaze...
Those only are capable of demonstrating the two who precisely know the one. She leans back, almost touching her loin, slowly, very slowly, now the neck, but instead of touching, the hand quivers, first one, then the other, the left hand slowly reaching out almost on the ground but not quite. She is reaching toward us, the audience, seeking alms, begging, or offering herself. Meanwhile the body slowly turns away, twisted in opposite directions, a perfect symbol of the antithesis between offering and chastity. At one and the same time, not one after the other.
After the show I chat with Julia. I have to remind myself that the choreography is hers, that she tailored it to herself. The coincidence both frightens and reassures me. I will be curious to see you both next time and always. Perhaps the fixedness and the consequent repeatability make the unique experience visible to others too. A philosopher’s thought is in the whole book not in the parts that are taken out of context. Alas the deficiencies of language and the shortcomings of the author do not allow the whole to be rendered. Yet I hope that through the choice of a few arbitrarily highlighted details I have managed to rouse the desire to see through the eyes of others.
It is up to me what I take with me to eternity. The sea, wine, the early morning breeze, the perfume of the linden, and this performance by Julia Sasso / Monika...
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