Caffè Latte

The blessing of mixing languages
/ O błogosławieństwie pomieszania języków/
Julia Hoczyk, Scena 4(60), 2009
Dance, music, text, and a lot of fun driven from being on stage together, and for the audience – that’s how in short the evening with “Caffè Latte” by Dada von Bzdulow can be called. Although, it’s a simplified vision of improvised dance, surely, it can prove that dance is not a ready-made product served for intellectual consumption, but also something open without a limited or perfect form.
Improvisation as such stays open for a wide range of free associations and limitless uses of various forms; whereas a witty play with conventions and theatre-dance techniques as well as some inter-textual juggle with cultural writings, coloured with self-ridicule and perfectly balanced distance have all long been the artistic hallmarks of Dada Theatre.
The latest production seems to be a continuation of that. The title „Caffe Latte” itself points at a light and confusing matter: instead of a “small expresso”, so a condensed message, we get a scattered mosaic of forms, quotations and interactions, on principle trying to steer clear of an unambiguous interpretation or some biting remarks of the audience.    
The fragments read by Bzdyl from Jean Baudrillard, one of the most significant sociologists and philosophers of the post-modern era, seem like a self-ridiculing comment. For Dada, this self-reflection seems to be the most important, so the words of the French thinker to deprive an event of the lasting and sound foundations can comment contrarily a firmly taken stand on aesthetics: to rationally process meanings.
Despite a performative breakthrough, the expectation of a finished work still persists, rather than the expectation of some experience and a process. Yet, there’s a paradox in this contradiction, since as Baudrillard notes, by controlling the meaning of the event we lose an eye contact with it and vice-versa. Hence, largely improvised “Caffe Latte” can be taken for a continuation of the deliberations from the brilliant “Factor T” – as a sort of light version of the theatrical essay on the status of art, the artists, the process of perception, and finally, the interaction between the stage and the audience.
A ridicule of the audience’s expectations, though full of understanding, takes place at the very beginning, when Bzdyl starts quoting consecutive points from the script; thus, some tension emerges between what’s been heard, and what can be seen, speaking for the autonomy of the “incarnated” art, where the audience can face the performers live: apart from Dada artists - Leszek Bzdyl and Katarzyna Chmielewska, there’s a music duet - Paweł Szamburski and Patryk Zakrocki; together they create the air of consent for imperfection and coincidence.
Bzdyl and Chmielewska walk, talk and dance (solo or in a duet), while the musicians accompany them live, somehow “hearing into” what’s been going on, once comically imposing rhythms and action on the dancers, and the other time joining them.
Similarly to the other performances by Dada, under the laws of ridiculing quotations, pastiche and parody, the echoes of numerous techniques and conventions emerge, however, in a peculiar way, through a “dada-wise” play with what’s between the form and the individual. Therefore, the consecutive references have even a greater impact, and “seduce” with what could be called a “plaything”, whereas what’s unknown makes the artists search for it themselves. Movement is growing alongside the music with its free flow in space, thus creating a polyphonic and volatile dance-music composition. Every next „Caffe Latte” will surely be remarkable and unique as well.