• Tolnai Tánclexikon - Az eszéki zsiráf / Tolnai's Dance Dictionary - The Giraffe from Eszék/2010/
Kortárs Táncszínházi Előadás
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-Test-Torna-Tánc-
Alkotók, előadók:
Jade mester: Bicskey Lukács
Spicctánc: Kőnig Lilla
Modelltánc: Bicskey Zsófia
Sporttánc: Parti Péter
Társastánc: Dobi András Néptánc: Takács László
Szobortánc: Ilyés Lénárd
Festő: Kővágó Nagy Imre
Fehér zenész galambok: Kallai Nóra, Gyulai Csaba
Dramaturg: Turai Katalin
Jelmez: Tresz Zsuzsa
Fény: Dézsi Katalin
Bandagazda: Góbi Rita
A háború újra és újra eljön, hogy eltöröljön mindent, de az élet újra és újra benépesíti az elhagyott házakat, belakja a letarolt vidéket. Hiába minden tisztogatás, keverednek az etnikumok; hiába minden kommunizmus, áll az egyház, megmaradtak a rítusok; hiába törnek össze a tárgyak, az ember ösztönös kreativitása, hogy újra és újra létrehozza saját tárgyait, nem múlik el, - ezek a Balkáni Babér című kötet motívumai.
Tolnai Ottó saját alkotási módszeréről beszélve, szívesen emlegeti, hogy egész életében örömmel vette kézbe a Tolnai Világlexikont, írásaiban törekszik az egyes motívumokról egy lexikon alaposságával és sokoldalúságával mindent megtudni és közreadni. Készülő darabunkban mi is így járjuk körbe témáinkat, csak ezúttal az egyes szócikkelyek helyére különböző stílusú táncszínházi jelenetek kerülnek.
Turai Katalin
Tolnai Tánclexikon from digitalistik visuals on Vimeo.
fotók (Kővágó Nagy Imre)
fotók (Kővágó Nagy Imre)
Sajtó:
Sándor Zita:
http://www.avorospostakocsi.hu/2010/12/03/fesztival-regi-uj-gyerekcipoben/
Jelentés Szegedről, az idei Thealter fesztiválról
2010. december 3.
A közös tér megteremtése – Eltáncolt Tolnai-szócikkek – Bencsik Orsolya színikritikája a GoBe Társulat Tolnai Tánclexikon – Az eszéki zsiráf című előadásáról:
http://irodalmijelen.hu/node/5750
ZENE-ZENE-TÁNC Művészeti folyóirat 10-03
idézet: Ünnep a táncban, tánc az ünnepben
írta: Hegedűs Sándor
Horváth Attila:
http://www.delmagyar.hu/szeged_hirek/tolnai_tanclexikon-_az_eszeki_zsiraf/2169403/
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=21179&id=100000837342858&ref=mf
Tolnai’s Dance Dictionary
The Giraffe from Eszék
Body – Movement – Dance
Performed and Created by:
Master Jade: Bicskey Lukács
Toe Dance: Kőnig Lilla
Supermodel Dance: Bicskey Zsófia
Sport Dance: Parti Péter
Ballroom Dance: Dobi András
Folk Dance: Takács László
Statute Dance: Ilyés Lénárd
Painter: Kővágó Nagy Imre
Musician Doves: Kallai Nóra, Gyulai Csaba
Dramaturgy: Turai Katalin
Costume: Tresz Zsuzsa
Lighting: Dézsi Katalin
Band-leader: Góbi Rita
War is here again and again to destroy, but life keeps repopulating the deserted houses. No matter how much ethnic cleansing is done, ethnicities keep mixing, no matter how Communist the state becomes religions survive, sacred rituals are performed, no matter if objects are shattered, the desire to make new ones in unbreakable - these are the main motives of Ottó Tolnai’s volume of war poetry „Laurel from the Balkans” dealing with his experience in Yugoslavia.
Ottó Tolnai has always been fond of the famous Hungarian encyclopedia bearing the same name as his family name: Tolnai’s World Dictionary. His engagement with its volumes did not remain without effect: in his writning Tolnai often stays with a chosen motive until it is shown in all its contexts from every aspect. This method of construction caught our attention, and we decided to structure our work in similar vain. The entries in our Dictionary circle around the characteristic motives of Tolnai’s poetry, only in our version words are replaced by the body, movement, music and dance.
Turai Katalin
Creating the Common Ground
- Danced Entries from Tolnai’s Dictionary -
(XX. Thealter Festival, Szeged, Old Synagogue 2010. 07.18.)
We are taken by “the exotic charm of another system of thought” as Foucault put it in his Preface to The Order of Things. If not the system of Borges’ Chinese Encyclopedia something quite close to its impossible thus ‘other’ discourse could be observed by the audience visiting Tolnai’s Dance Dictionary. The piece was presented by the GoBe Company in the Old Synagogue on the third day of the 20th Thealter Festival, Szeged.
The GoBe Company from Budapest (led by the young ballet dancer-choreographer Rita Góbi born in the partly Hungarian territory of ex-Yugoslavia the ‘Vajdaság’) abolished the usual world-order, the site where different and similar things normally meet. However as the unusual and impossibly varied things were placed next to each other and the space got filled – unlike in the ‘Chinese Encyclopedia’ - where “what is impossible is not the propinquity of the things listed, but the very site on which their propinquity would be possible” - the creators of this piece could find the common ground.
A new common space and order got established on several planes. On the one hand the encyclopedia’s alphabetical order, on the other the stage itself created the common ground, on which the surreal entities performed by the dancers could co-exist. Apart from the lexicon and the stage, their co-existance had also been enabled by the operations of a Master of Ceremonies – a stately figure manipulating the stage in a majestic robe. The Master reanimated the characters of a dead world (silent and still hence dead), and commanded them with his stick and word. While in a sence he determined the birth of a new order, as matters proceeded he got caught up in the turmoil and had become a figure among the rest. However the most important and decisive factor, which connected beings and things swirling on stage, was Tolnai’s spirit. Not that of Ottó Tolnai, the person, but that of the texture of his poetry; his language, which in this case was mediated through another language: dance, movement and gymnastics. (Gymnastics inasmuch as the performers did several extreme tricks reminding the audience of circus-artists.)
Thus the performers lifted the entries most important to them from the Tolnai World Encyclopedia (the name of the famous Hungarian encyclopedia is identical to the name of the poet) and transposed these into dance. Only once did words prevail: when the Master of Ceremonies recited a Tolnai poem (Poem from Veszprém from the volume Laurel from the Balkans). Between things and words a third entity appeared: movement, hence in addition to the relation between word and thing, the relations between word and movement and thing and movement were explored; and concerning all of these relations we had to experience that there was no perfect translation, no perfect equation between the one and the other.
Attempting to go beyond the encyclopedic interpretation of the performance, that is to say the aspect of portraying entries from an encyclopedia, one needs to work out how the presented world – ’Tolnai’s universe’ - operates. We arrive at a point wherethe characters: the girrafe from Eszék ( the character, the ’thing’ referred to in the title) , the flamingo, the minority poet from Yugoslavia start to take up their particular places. These entities get located and thus gain their meaning to a certain degree from movement, but more importantly through the help of words. However as meaning itself is problematized in the piece, we always have more than one way to interpret what we see. For instance, multiple interpretation is called for by such elements as ’the dance macabre of flies’ or ’the ballroom with mirrors’. Nevertheless it is clear that we are dealing with some kind of search for one’s own place, and in this case this entails not only placement in Foucault’s fictive space but in geographical space, aswell.
One way to start unraveling the piece is to analyze the relations between the Balkans and Europe, and the national minority dilemma: being torn between one’s place of birth and ’the motherland’ of the nation - and thus approach issues of space and location. Another aspect would be to contrast leaving behind one place and searching for and creating a new one, this reading is propelled by the conditions of war mentioned in the text. The war reference encourages me to think of the opening picture of the performance - a silent, motionless image, which slowly gets reanimated - as corpses surrounded by flies, mentioned in Tolnai’s poem later on in the show. However as the flyer states: ’people are creative and determined to reconstruct their belongings again and again no matter how many times these fall prey to destruction”. We can understand the next part of the performance as the process of such re-population and reconstruction. The next image to investigate is that of the ballroom with mirrors; to understand this we need to go back to the figures of the giraffe, the minority poet and the flamingo once again. Concerning their relations the following should be noted: the giraffe was the only animal in the Zoo of Eszék, for which the authorities could not find adequate placement when the Zoo had been evacuated on account of the war. For this reason the lonely giraffe is now probably starnded somewhere between Europe and the Balkans. The lonely displacement of the giraffe could be connected to the motive of the endangered flamingo. ( The famous flamingo topos of Tolnai’s universe has also been visually presented in the performance – a statute like bird character was standing on a huge postament in the background of the stage, however very visibly, centrally placed.) The flamingo on the verge of extinction could be identified with the minority poet of ’Small-Yugoslavia’: both need to be bred not to become extinct. If there is no other way than perhaps to be multiplied by mirrors. Thus another reading of the performance is born: the stage is turned into such a hall of mirrors, however the looking glass in this case does not mirror the Same, but ’the Other’. So the minority poet of small Yugoslavia does not get to strengthen his own identity (by multiplication), quite on the contrary his identitiy gets shattered, his confidence lost.
Góbi Rita and the co-creators attempted to bring to life the entries of the dictionary mainly through movement – ballet, folk, classical dance – but the costumes added some extra visual clues (flamingo). The performance portayed a specific interpretation of Tolnai’s world, a geographical location amidst its destruction and struggles was shown and documented. The desire for documentation must be noted: on one side of the stage – facing the angelic musicians - a photographer in angel-like clothes took pictures during the entire performance, his action transformed fiction into reality (into artefact), and thus saved it from evanescence. Thus the different things in each others proximity, the special world on the operating-table of the stage had been saved for recollection: its creation, existence and destruction cannot be denied anymore. The photos of the angel serve as evidence: no matter how different the planes and perspectives, from which the various things originate, a common ground can be found for them. However to find it a radical new way of thinking, a radical new order is necessary.
Review by: Orsolya Bencsik Translated by: Katalin Turai
