EDEN


The Garden, Bartłomiej Miernik, TEATR nr 06/2006

While pondering on this project, it never seems to me an absolute entirety. It is rather like a dark, rushing torrent: faces, voices, gestures, callings, shadows, moods, dreams – nothing lasting, tangible any longer than the twinkling of an eye; and even then this is only seeming.
I could endlessly describe shades of colours and tones, but it is pointless.
Let’s better get to work!”
This is how in an introduction to a script Ingmar Bergman tried to outline ‘Cries and whispers’. These words perfectly describe “EDEN”- a brand new performance by Dada von Bzdülöw Theatre. I don’t intend to treat Bergman’s movie and Bzdyl’s theatre as one. Though, I would like to point one, perhaps most important analogy between those two: both the Swedish director and the Polish choreographer present “vertical works”. In both cases we deal with a human experience of metaphysics, rarely or almost not at all - with a dialogue between fellow humans.
“EDEN” is an intimate, extremely personal voice of Leszek Bzdyl. After performances toying with the form, winking at the spectator - a new stage reality has come into being; a reality which, as the artist says at the beginning of the show, is just a segment of a certain space. I would add it is a serious, hard talk with the spectator.
There is no stage set in the performance. Action takes place by the curtains in a subdued, dim light. If a spectator fails to enter the story from the very beginning, its perception may become impossible. “EDEN” incessantly inspires us to ask questions like: why, what for? Why don’t they look into each other’s eyes, why are their faces frozen, why do they dance in a group if they are apart? During a few-minute’s sequence, four dancers are resting on their elbows, and empty gazing at the audience. They are together, though, each dances differently. They move to a rhythm of murmurs, some broken cracks. Often, their movement also breaks. Suddenly sexuality and eroticism disappear. Instead there is random movement, some unity, dancers’ beating hearts and vibrating bodies. Single rhythms try to catch a common rhythm. It doesn’t work though. “Synchronicity” becomes impossible. Each dancer, although dancing in a group, is a lone-wolf. Like in a real life.
Watching the performance in ŻAK, I had the impression that confused bodies of the dancers came across each other inertly, almost as balls rolling on a billiard table.
The dancers broadened the stage reality. They disappeared for a while behind the audience and came back to join the others in another “random” sequence.
“EDEN” is the garden of the first parents, this is a first meeting of a woman and a man with the Devil.
I missed in “EDEN” the Biblical Eden. Maybe it was the choreographer who made a mistake of making a reference to the Koran instead of the Christian tradition which seems obvious in this case. Why did he reach for the Koran? Using the word Eden is a clear announcement, containing a lot of essential information, bearing important contents.
One more thing about the performance. There is a couple (Bzdyl & Steller) moving in a sensual dance. After a while he comes to the other woman standing beside in a carnal closure and gently puts his head on her shoulder. As if he were remorseful, torn. The first woman continues the dance, now with another partner (Szatarski).
There are more scenes like this in “EDEN”, scenes touching the deepest layers of our sensibility.
In the quoted description Bergman concluded: “I don’t know how I should describe it. Everything ought to be movement, almost a ritual dance but without exaggeration. Perhaps like “Pavane for a deceased princess”.
In one of their manifests artists of Dada von Bzdülöw add: “The authors of Dada Theatre’s performances are convinced that their creations are sometimes wiser than they are, as any emanation of life is wiser than a person trying to describe it.”