4 settembre 2014 Commenti disabilitati su Special reporters | Rachel Donnelly on «EGGS ARE GOOD FOR YOUR HAIR» by Katja Heitmann Views: 2320 News, Reviews

Special reporters | Rachel Donnelly on «EGGS ARE GOOD FOR YOUR HAIR» by Katja Heitmann

“Insert egg-based pun here”

What: Eggs are good for your hair by Katja Heitmann
Where: CSC Garage Nardin
When: Thursday August 22^nd, 3.30pm

There’s a squat, inflatable sumo figure tossing an egg back and forth restlessly between his hands and the lofty space of Garage Nardin thrums with the hum of a fan. Several audience members scurry in scanning the rows of chairs for a seat, and stop short when they notice the uncanny spectacle at the side of the stage. There are intermittent, nervous titters of laughter before the lights go down.

What follows is a litany of absurdity, underpinned by a sardonic, sidelong look at performance art. The squat, shuffling sumo man, an unsettling figure with a mask frozen in a permanent, teary grimace, gives way to an only slightly less unnerving masked female, teetering in high heels. She speaks in a cartoonish, high-pitched squeal, a register that obscures the words she speaks. Amidst the ear-piercing babble, snatches of sentences can be heard: ‘Welcome to my show’ (repeated several times) and ‘bullshit contemporary art’.

After a series of impressive confabulations with a slack rope, the high-heels, a microphone, and several dozen eggs, performer Melanie Hagedorn ends gasping for breath and dripping with yolk. Rivulets of vivid yellow run down her chin and soak through her cream-coloured leotard; shell fragments and viscous slime cover the stage. Reactions among the audience run the gamut of disgust (probably egg-based) and guffaws of mirth. Some people seem to really enjoy it. The performance lasts less than 15 minutes.

What’s at stake here? Heitmann uses a mash-up of forms (circus is a clear influence) in an effort to create something conscientiously weird. The result is a work that’s definitely peculiar, but also rather arbitrary. It speaks nothing about the body, and everything about the artist’s concern with saying things about art. But it’s often the case that when you try to step outside the work to see what the boundary lines are, you leave nothing behind at the centre.

The spectacle is spectacular, but it’s also empty.

by Rachel Donnelly

Thanks to Rachel Donnelly, a collegue from Communicatig Dance project, for her contribute during BMotion dance programme 2014through this blog: here we publish an article about «NIKE» by Dudapaiva Co.