Arts Stuffed Animals and Cigarettes
posted by on October 5 at 13:36 PM
The first words you see on the website for Berlin-based dance group Dorky Park: “Memory is Fragile; Garbage Lasts Forever.ā€¯ That is an artistic statement, mind you, not an ecological one.
They are performing this weekend at On the Boards (this year’s winner of the Genius Award for organization). I am super-excited.
The company, led by Constanza Macras, has 18 “dorks” from France, Argentina, Peru, Israel, Australia, Iceland, and Iowa. The show—Back to the Present is about loss and the corrosion of memory, but its aesthetic is a frenetic, brazen orgy of of experimental dance, pop, and trash: Grieg’s “In the Hall of the Mountain King” smashed against a karaoke “Shot Through the Heart”; toy cows and eagles smoking cigarettes; an acrobatic beat-down; a woman in a red dress and heels falling, spinning, and undulating like a graceful spastic; another woman in her underwear, on the edge of a roof, crying, looking like she’s going to jump, suddenly hit by a barrage of stuffed animals.
There is cacophony . People at a wild party die with pasta shooting out their mouths.
There is jumping.
And flying.
And sexiness.
And excess of all kinds. It’s gonna be awesome.
I was speaking recently to OtB artistic director Lane Czaplinski about an unrelated matter. He tried to articulate a sentence including the words “projectā€¯ and “projectorā€¯ and “wall.ā€¯ He stumbled over all three. “I’m sorry, I’ve been hanging out with Constanza Macras this afternoon and I can’t speak English anymore.ā€¯
Even the distinguished Mr. Czaplinski, an artistic director highly trained in both English and Resistance to Artist Befuddlement Rays, was undone by the weird power of this international dance conspiracy.
May Dorky Park undo us all.
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