This project was started in 2009 and 2011, and was realised inside the premises of: Tanzhaus NRW, Düsseldorfer Schauspielhaus, Liberdance, the Zadar Dance Ansamble and &TD Teatar, as a part of the Choreoroam 2009 Programme and Eurokaz Pogon.Premiere Acts 3&4: January 2012, &TD
TeatarThis project is supported by the Ministry of Culture of the Republic of Croatia and the Zagreb City Department of Education, Culture and
Sports.
Vanishing Acts endeavours to use the destruction of an individual, the core concept of the theatrical play, as a starting point for research of theatre as a medium. Can an act of destruction or the disintegration of an identity affirm the potential for new development? Dispossessing the body opens up the conduits for infinite narratives.In literal terms, this solo dance performance pieces fuse media performance with theatre, producing disparate conclusions which compel the audience to explore their complex associations and
interconnectivity.Act III is the continuation of the 2009 collaboration with a performer Petra Hrašćanec
which in turn was a variant of Act II.
In Act III, Sanja
Tropp Frühwald addresses these difficulties by utilizing the reverse perspective: the solo performer deals with the remnants and traces that evince the presence of a persona that evanesced prior to the start of the performance. The piece can be seen as a wickedly allegorical detective tale that exposes the crimes of childhood, swaying as it does between the realms of visibility and desire, of the attainable and permissible. The choreographic process is punctuated by attritional motifs of exhaustion (of body, space and ideas) which are iterated throughout the scenes. This repetition of the ‘trauma’ permeates not only through the audience’s perception, but also the media-controlled aspects of the piece: audio, visuals, characters and the abstract dance itself.
The choreographer attempts in Act IV to deal with issues of disorientation and the delineation of territories, fantasizing about freedom and authority, while the body and the identities of the performer distort themselves during the performance. This choreographic process tries to juxtapose a narrative against the attempts to answer the question of what happens when reality loses its intrinsic value, what happens when global structure starts to crumble and gets out of control. Only the strategies of egress will remain.
Vanishing Acts is a mediation on shared moments, concepts, assumptions and conventions, warning that ‘each of us has been ”absolved” – made free – in a way that seem hopeless to those who wish to apply reason to their lives: we are utterly alone’. (Peter Strasser)
