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Posts tagged ‘Tourist-A Decentered Play’

Oct 31

Also to be discussed – presentations of Sanja Mitrovic and Gabriele Reuter

Iulia Popovici

Once upon a time there was a happy country called Yugoslavia. Really, it was happy, not because even the trees joyfully spelled the name of the leader Tito but because people were happy, even those pictured on the 100 dinars bill. Then the country stopped being happy – until its citizens (fewer now, since the country had become smaller) gathered again on the bridges of the capital, to save it from bombing. In Will you ever be happy again?, the Serbian-born artist Sanja Mitrovic and the German Jochen Stechmann star a performance about how the international perception of national identity marks the personal construction of the self, putting in a mirror their own experiences. The result is ironic without being bluntly critical and touching without being sentimental – equilibrium very difficult to reach when talking about the innocent bystanders of recent past. Read more

Oct 30

One Too Many

Nóra Bükki Gálla

Being a tourist you are pampered and challenged at the same time: people don’t expect you to keep the rules but on the other hand (since they don’t know your ‘world’, your context) they reflect an image that you might prefer not to see of yourself – and wouldn’t have to anyway, were it not for the simple fact that you are a tourist.

Gabriele Reuter takes that idea: the figure of a foreigner we cannot really identify with, still accept and even grow to love in a way, multiplies it by four and (unfortunately enough for both audience and choreographer) thinks this is enough to make a statement of art. No wonder it isn’t. She tries hard though, dresses her performers in parachutes, jungle costumes and Eskimo wear, adds some truly interesting movement material, and her performers are gregariously confident… Still. Or should we say, all the more…? Read more