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Ghostland Cinema; Does it Start with a Kiss?; Wunschkonzert; Waiting
BE Festival
Birmingham Rep
**** The penultimate night at The BE Festival
sparked a high and energetic interest with four pieces of art from
around Europe complemented by a showcase of visual arts and music.
Now in its second year at Birmingham REP, The BE
Festival promotes a celebration of creativity and art from
fourteen countries. Friday’s evening programme demonstrated a night
of theatre, dance and art inspired by companies from Spain, Hungary,
Germany, Cuba, Belgium and Iraq. We were introduced by a somewhat unconventional
start to the evening as The REP welcomed the audience via the back of
the studio which was transformed into a party of culture, as we entered
a thriving world of colour and excitement with an exhibition of ongoing
projects from The BE Festival, creating an energetic buzz and
anticipation for the performances ahead. After a fascinating insight of the inspiration
that BE Festival has created thus far, we entered the studio from
backstage, a comforting and intimate idea to show that we the audience
we just as important to the festival as the performances. This only highlighted further that art is for
everyone and not one person is excluded. There were no seat allocations
during these performances and the result was a wonderful atmosphere of
friends and strangers exchanging thoughts about performances and the
festival, creating a universal sense of involvement. The first performance was from Spanish theatre
company Mingbeast’s ‘Ghostland Cinema’. This showed a great bond between
English and Spanish theatre as performers Gemma Rowan and Ixchel Rubio
Martinez painted an ambiguous picture of how easy it is not only to
commit crime, but most importantly, what the motives are for committing
it. Both ladies worked well together in this artistic
and humorous showcase, however the performance was sometimes hard to
follow and the meaning was lost at certain points. Perhaps this cryptic
piece placed too much emphasis on visuals and motifs rather than
narrative. Still this was a thoughtful and entertaining performance. Next we were introduced to ‘Does it Start with a
Kiss?’ by Eva Duda Dance Company. This explosive trio from Hungary gave
us thirty minutes of physical passion, with an awe inspiring piece of
choreography exploring the physical relationship and dependency between
one person and another. This thrilling performance highlighted
effortlessly the emotions we sense intimately that are indeed hard to
express using words. Dancers Beatrix Simko, Andor Rusu and Milan Ujvari
held our attention and wide-eyed gazes as they took us through their
captivatingly sensual and energetically high showcase of the motions of
physical relationships. This interval played just as big a part of the
evening as the performances themselves. In this the audience were
invited to sample a Spanish inspired dinner on the main stage and enjoy
the thoughts of other festival goers. This was an excellent interlude
and a great allusion to the essence of what BE Festival is all about. After good company and food, the vast and excited
audience were introduced to another movement piece with Cooperativa
Maura Morales’ performance entitled ‘Wunschkonzert’. Morales’ solo
performance, which took inspiration from the same titled play by Franz
Xaver Kroetz, presented a lonely and isolated atmosphere, showing a
physical longing captured by jarring moves and passionate expression.
Morales is impressive at exploring the essence of being alone and
longing for companionship. The evening programme concluded with an
instillation of video, dance and real life documentation with director
Mokhallad Rasem’s ‘Waiting’. Rasem experienced the terrors of war whilst
working at The National Theatre of Iraq, which inspired him to create
the moving performance. This production used the question ‘what does
waiting mean?’ as its central thought and from this we saw the responses
from strangers of real-life and their stories which provoked deep and
touching reactions from the audience as the lives of different people
were revealed. The performance’s fundamental emphasis relied
heavily on the element of film and unfortunately the inclusion of dance
and movement did not fit within this soft piece. The performers used
white sheets as an artistic frame for projections which gave a feeling
that the performance was longer than it actually was. The physical elements did not accentuate the
power of what the strangers in the videos had to say but instead, let us
down as we waited for the performers to become more involved. Perhaps
this was an ironic injection made intentionally by Rasem as we too
experienced a sense of waiting. Each piece showed a worldly experience with the
universal exploration of art being at the centre. Elizabeth Halpin
11-07-14
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