>>PREVIEW
LIFE IS GOOD
Opens May 1
W + M Physical Theatre and Theatre Junction
The GRAND (Theatre Junction)
Forget lithe grand battement jetés, graceful arabesques or pirouettes. Instead, prepare for the sweat of exhaustion, the threat of anger and vocalization. Prepare for "snot coming out of the nose, you know?" smiles Melissa Monteros of W + M Physical Theatre.
Monteros and Wojciech Mochniej believe in prescribing a broad sense of beauty to dance and physical theatre. They challenge the idea of physical theatre as an esthetically pleasing form of entertainment, and seek to push past lyrical beauty to demand a visceral response from their audience. Through exploration of the raw impulses of the body, both choreographers use the separate techniques of text, dance vocabulary and pedestrian movement as building blocks to create a performance.
Former members of the Silesian Dance Theatre Company, the first professional company in Poland, Monteros and Mochniej decided to break off and start their own group in 1991. W + M draws on the Polish theatre tradition to create its pieces, expressions of what the two describe as a universal language.
"The Polish theatre scene and Polish culture is based on a lot of visualization," says Mochniej. "Years and years ago, behind the Iron Curtain, underground theatre developed with fantastic actors who were physically trained as well. Under communist constriction, nothing can be said straight – you have to find a way to say the truth about something from the other side, through signs, through gestures, through other ways." W + M’s choreography works to create a language that every audience can understand, regardless of its culture or location, to "build a bridge between us and the public," Mochniej explains.
"We take a word like ‘anger’ and describe it: what does anger mean? What kind of quality do words have? We don’t necessarily show it in the most pantomime way, but we transfer it into a more abstract movement. We try to create the most universal language. We take this description of the word anger, the physical statement, the emotional statement, and we try to find the most universal movement to reach people all over the place."
W + M believes that theatre should be more than entertainment, so Mochniej and Monteros strive to create pieces that challenge and engage. These pieces are also essential in defining their performance style as more than just "dance."
"We don’t use the word ‘dancers.’ We use ‘performers,’ because they sometimes have to shout, they sometimes have to scream," Mochniej explains. "Sometimes they don’t have to move, just talk."
"The expectation is that work should not just be entertaining and fluffy," adds Monteros of the Polish sense of dance, or physical, theatre. "It should be deep, and the audience wants to be engaged, they want to look and ask, why this, why that. They can read layers of meaning and movement. And the sensibility about the body creates a much broader sensibility about what is beautiful in movement."
More than just a refined physical skill of high leg lifts and steps in perfect sync, beauty becomes an expression of what is most real, most human. Beyond challenging ideals of dance and physical theatre, Monteros and Mochniej’s creative motivations have evolved over the past two decades.
"For years we’ve been dealing with political statements," Mochniej admits. "We’ve gone through the most deep and nature-shaking brutal exploration of our bodies, to something more. With Life Is Good, we try to take a little break from the big emotional statements, because we wish, after 20 years of work, to recognize that life is good, and there is something besides all this struggle and political involvement."
While commenting on their personal journeys as artists, they also feel that their work reflects the emotions of their audience. Still using their signature techniques of physical theatre to create an emotional piece full of conflict, Life Is Good also brings an appreciation of the enjoyment of life and a new kind of beauty.
"I think recognizing that this is it, that the way we celebrate this moment really matters," reflects Monteros. "There’s a certain point in life where you recognize that the bad times are just as good as the good times, that they really take you somewhere." |
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