Calling from Depths of Nature
The dramaturgy of the ENCOUNTER festival is extended every year by stage forms that are not necessarily stage plays or drama. The main programme more and more often also includes stage dance and movement theatre. After the Georgian Lysistrata, this year the festival featured a stage dance performance called Erlking from the workshop of Kr. Sarafov National Academy of Theatre and Film Arts of Bulgaria.
The story is very simple – the daughters of a mystic creature called Erlking try to capture a stray soul. They attract it by offering a feeling of freedom and liberty which the soul may gain if it heeds their calling. After a while these fairies become sirens that lure sailors to hit a cliff. Step by step, the pleasant feeling turns into fear and uncertainty. But the calling from the mountains cannot be escaped anymore. The victim ends up locked in a cave.
The Divadlo na Orlí theatre turns into a mystic forest in a couple of moments. This fact does not need to be emphasized by scenography. The whole scene consists just of a couple of simple elements. Two white moving panels merge with the rear prospectus. Colourful abstract animations are projected onto these clean surfaces. No concrete shape, no actual messages. Just an addition to the mystical atmosphere.
The atmosphere is further substantially shaped by work with light, music or sounds (cracking of branches, loud breathing). And the whole experience is enhanced by short repetitive text inserts recited by the individual dancers. The speech is technically processed into echoes and the actresses work with their voices is a way clearly showing that they are not real but rather very surreal, very superhuman. The whole impression, however horrifying, continues to resemble a fairy-tale.
The mixture of the actors´ movement and the visual aspect of the performance together create an impressively harmonic image. The technical mastering of the dance elements might be questioned but this factor does not at all interfere with the overall cultural experience brought by the dancers on stage.
