7 SILENCES FOR 7 DAYS
Concept: Zrinka Šimičić Mihanović
Poetry: Dubravko Mihanović
Ambient installation: Martina Mezak
Music: Dino Brazzoduro
Dance: Zrinka Šimičić Mihanović
The show 7 silences for 7 days is a blend of poetry by Dubravko Mihanović, light installation of the multimedia artist Martina Mezak, authored music by Dino Brazzoduro and dance by Zrinka Šimičić Mihanović.
The poems by Dubravko Mihanović speak about silence, more precisely about silences, seven silences through seven days. The dramaturgy of this poetic cycle, motifs, atmosphere and the rhythm of his poems served as an inspiration for visual, dance, and musical expression of silence.
The visual solution by Martina Mezak is a very subtle, but sensory highly effective ambient installation, composed of smoke walls. Abstraction and discontinuity are elements that make it closer to dance.
Dramaturgically, dance follows poetry; it is spatially determined by the lighting architecture, while choreographically it deals with contrasting the minimal and sustained on one side, and noisy and talkative on the other side.
The music by Dino Brazzoduro, primarily created as a response to word, brings elements of concreteness and narration, which occasionally determine the reading of the movement itself, while in other moments there is a principle of minimality, which supports the meaning of emptiness.
The four media in the show are equally represented and the position of the viewer, within the scene itself, additionally contributes to the experience. The space of the audience and the performing space are mutually intertwined. Thus, the performer is at times really close to the viewers, almost at the border of comfortableness, while in other moments she is far away, at the threshold of visibility. Every viewer sits more or less isolated, which underlines the interpretation of silence as separation, and changes in the lighting architecture make the viewers participants of the performance in a particular way.
The project was supported by the City of Zagreb and the Ministry of Culture of the Republic of Croatia.
It has been realized in collaboration with the Croatian Movement and Dance Institute, and the Zagreb Dance Center.
From reviews:
“Poetry is the firm source of the entire project and puts it into a frame, while lighting, sound and dance in the performance occupy an equally important position and respond through their own medium, or develop the core theme of silence, and through it noise, gentleness, whiteness, writing, or dying brought by the poetry. Thus the joint play of light, body and sound is the main part of this project, while we read the poetry as an epilogue at the very end via a projection on the wall, or in a provided booklet, later, alone, in our own time.
Reading of the poetry creates a clear relationship between light, peace and silence, on the other side of movement, noise and darkness. The relationship which is interesting, refined and appeasing on a poetic, spiritual and philosophical level.”
Iva Nerina Sibila, PLESNA SCENA.hr, 6 October 2011
http://www.plesnascena.hr/index.php?p=article&id=1359
Video and photography: Jasenko Rasol
