ACHING WHEEL
INSPIRED BY THE THEATRE SCRIPT BY DIMITRIJE KOKANOV
Choreography: Petra Hrašćanec
Dramaturgy: Saša Božić
Dancers: Ema Crnić, Una Štalcar-Furač, Damir Klemenić, Šimun Stankov
Stage and costume design: Tina Gverović
Lighting: Saša Fistrić
Music: Nenad Sinkauz
Producers: Ivan Mrđen and Mario Gigović
Produced by: de facto Theatre Company
The project if funded by the Croatian Ministry of Culture.
How and in what way do we recognize the leadringer, how do we exercise a community, is tradition only an undecipherable fossil, what is our heritage – those are some of the questions raised by the new dance performance by Petra Hrašćanec and Saša Božić titled Aching Wheel. The choreography emerged as the product of researching folk and traditional heritage and tracing back different patterns of ritual behavioural models found in our contemporary society.
As the human community had been developing throughout history, customs related to everyday life, annual events or basic activities ensuring survival and gradual progress were passed from one generation to another. Those traditional customs passed from one generation to another have gradually turned into behavioural patterns and ways of living and acting but they also make an integral part of cultural identity of a particular local or broader community. Nowadays, when urbanisation and industrialisation processes have accelerated up the rhythm of life and made a significant impact on disappearance of older layers of traditional culture, outside of fixed formats of folklore performance. Choreographic material was developed on the principle of deconstruction and insertion of traditionally recognizable folklore motifs at the same time examining different ways such recognizable motifs activate common dance patterns combined within a performance. Present day folklore performances are always created for the audience; paradoxically, Aching Wheel juxtaposes folklore and contemporary dance (in the performing manner) but it also takes it back to its original field: an activity on the community level. Ritual patterns, fertility invocations, and simple courting float in a bizarre attempt to exercise togetherness again.
January 7, 2019