A Tiny Cut in a Velvet Dress
Created by and with: Julie-Anne Stanzak, Gesa Piper, Scott Jennings, Pawel Malicki, Oleg Stepanov und Nathalie Larquet
About the project
“A Tiny Cut in a Velvet Dress” – a film for three dancers and one antler.
This winter, at the beginning of the lockdown, I had a dream that had a big impact on me. I was in a snowy forest, crawling along the path that crossed the woods. To my left, a three-dimensional cube was rotating around each of its angles and in all directions. On each of its surfaces I saw the events of my life … then I lifted my head and looked into the distance, below, at the end of the snowy path, trees appeared with their leaves under the sun.
I then think that during this pandemic, each of us must have felt the same as in this dream.
Life stops, our actions are limited … our gestures get lost in a daily life that fades and forces us to repeat almost the same rituals every day. How we carry on and try to overcome the sadness and uncertainty of the future concerns us all.
The film takes place in an uninhabited villa with empty rooms.
Each of the protagonists develops in different parts of the villa and remembers their life experiences from different eras, from childhood to adulthood. In the manner of Proust, they “visit the rooms, the emotions, the flavours, the sounds, the sufferings, the joys that float in their memories.”
The villa becomes a living organism that gradually fills up with their memories, their gestures, their dance, their sensibility.
They pay attention to their slightest sensations and emotions and dare to make themselves vulnerable.
They discover an infinite and imaginary space in the present moment. They give themselves every opportunity to dream, to imagine, to fantasise, to give shape to their interests, to feel alive.
The antlers symbolise all these as yet unknown side spaces that dwell in the unconscious. The protagonists scrutinise their fears and their hidden desires.
Everyone becomes the other, dreams of the other, regardless of gender. What is important is the feeling of not being alone, feeling alive, transcending oneself, losing oneself, forgetting oneself, finding oneself and perhaps discovering oneself from a new perspective.
IMPRESSIONS
Sponsors & Supporters
Supported by the NATIONAL PERFORMANCE NETWORK – STEPPING OUT, funded by the Federal Government Commissioner for Culture and the Media as part of the NEUSTART KULTUR. Hilfsprogramm Tanz, the Kulturbüro Wuppertal and with the kind support of Christian Baierl – Renaissance Immobilien AG and special thanks to Matthias Louis
