Four dancers attempt the impossible: to get the audience to partake of the experience of giving birth. They share their own personal stories and memories of being in labour, including bodily functions, traumatic and euphoric events.
They try to turn everything inside out that happened to them in the unconscious realm: beyond closed eyes and beneath the skin. They use humor, powerful phisicality, words, images and sounds.To everyone that was ever born and is still alive.//We don’t remember how we were born, and we won’t be able to tell the story of our dying.
“Giving birth is an equally elemental borderline event, outside real space and time — a rarefied experience.‘Giving birth is the most personal public matter, and The Symptoms (aka Hungary’s most likeable contemporary dance company) manages to create a shared experience of what is deeply intimate and individual. They achieve this by means of articulated, as well as mute confessions, and through the universal language of dance. The four female dancers, one of them an expectant mother, and the choreographer, Réka Szabó, reach back into their somatic knowledge of giving birth.
They go beyond their personal sphere and put their subject into a broader social context. Also, they touch upon the much disputed right to free birth. The performance features a spectacular production design. This, coupled with a splendid sense of humor takes us back to the origin of life through a dramaturgy similar to the process of labour. Rhythmic contractions expand real time and space. They guide us, the audience, deep into the realm of instincts and the subconscious; gradually preparing us for the traumatic, yet euphoric moment of release.’ – said Orsolya Bálint, curator.
About The Symptoms
The Symptoms is a 15-year old performance group constantly looking for new ways of expression, of making an impact and inspiring people think, feel and connect. They move freely across genres. They believe in the infinity of expression, the healing power of humour, and personality. They maintain that if they dig deep enough, they will get to the common human experience.Each of their productions is a different world and has a new language. Their creations are thought-provoking, dramatic, unfeigned and liberating. They are in dialogue with today’s world. They have created shows for the big and the small stage, documentaries, video blogs, theatrical adventure games, dance theatre in education works for high school students, and they offer morning gymnastics classes and workshops as well.
Date and location: 29 November (Friday) 8 PM, Trafó
For ticket information, click here!