Translation of Norwegian newspaper article
”Dansande draperi”

VISIBLE: Is what we see and what is visible the same?

 
Dancing Drapery
DANCE
 
”Nothing’s for Something”
Bastard Festival for Performing Arts, Olavshallen, small hall.
By Heine Avdal and Yukiko Shinozaki
Created and performed by: Heine Avdal, Brynjar Åbel Bandlien, Fabrice Moinet, Taka Shamoto, Oleg Soulimenko and Yukiko Shinozaki.
Sound design and electronics: Fabrice Moinet
Lighting design and technical direction: Hans Meijer
 
REVIEW
Everything is movement, and the objects are only illusions on the retina. Or…?
 
It is not often I let myself be seduced to such a great degree as I was in this unusually beautiful, extraordinary and throughtprovoking production by Heine Avdal and Yukiko Shinozaki. Their keyword is to make visible what is invisible. Traces can have many forms, some are erased at once, some last close to an eternity and some are visible through their own absence. Is this too complicated to understand?
No, not after having seen this Brussels-based company’s playful, poetic and quite so philosophic performance – a visual gift to the audience.
 
It starts with an ordinary scene where all the curtains are down. It is a little peculiar maybe, that the curtains are hanging from big gray helium balloons up under the lighting-bridge, but except for that, all is normal. We wait for the curtains to be lifted. Then, as the ultimate Viennese waltz ”An der Schönen Blauen Donau”, is heard over the speakers, carefully, very carefully, the curtains, or rather the draperies start to dance. Yes, you may believe it or not, but they are waltzing! It is magical and unbelievably beautiful. But what is hiding behind? What is it we do not see?

After a while, and quite gradually, human limbs come into view before all the draperies slowly disappear, and we are left with very visible draperydrivers who in movement and in dance transfer themselves smoothly through a slow strobolandscape. Then, just as smooth and as carfully, projections of simple-line-drawings appear; a projection of a citylandscape, and more importantly, outlines or imprints of the people who gradually disappear from stage. Personally I had the association with the painted outlines one often sees in cities, which shows where something criminal or violent has taken place. It all became a bit creepy.
 
But then Avdal and Shinozaki take us back to the poetry. To the sounds of birdcries and big-city-noises, nine white balloons, lit-up and about a meter in size, dance through the stage and the hall, right above our heads, controlled by ingenious electronics and almost invisible propellas. I sink back into the chair and want this to last for ever. Am I seeing what I am seeing? And is this reality?
Avdal and Shinozaki have recreated the wonderment of childhood and asked me quite a many existential questions. And that without saying a word.
 
Wednesday September 12, 2012
Amund Grimstad
 
Translated from Norwegian by
Anne Lande Peters
annelandepet@hotmail.com