When the plague epidemic known as the “Black Death” was dying out in Europe in 1353, the people of the Old Continent faced unimaginable losses. The population was reduced by nearly forty percent, and interpersonal relationships were marked by distrust and suspicion. With help came dance. Its communal nature helped restore compassion and mutual trust, as well as renewed sense of one’s own body and the bodies of Others. In 2020, an incomparable pandemic brought the entire world to a halt. Subsequent waves of disease, sequential lockdowns, and fear of the unknown affected interpersonal relationships, shattering our habits. Regardless of one’s living situation, the pandemic became everyone’s issue. It reinforced social distrust of the other. It has increased bodily distance.
In her latest choreographic work, Renata Piotrowska-Auffret explores the movement and social dimension of Danse Macabre, focusing on the communal and bodily potential of continuous, purifying dance. A dance that soothes fears and offers the possibility of discovering joy, distance and group strength. It is not, however, about bringing back an old ritual but about creating a new one. It’s about allowing the artists and the audience to rediscover their own bodies “here and now” – in the Modelatornia space. To reject the fear of the Other and, above all, to identify isolation, loneliness and the inseparability of life from death as an experience common to all.
We open JK Theatre to new methods of work, starting the Triennale at the Modelatornia with an unobvious combination of theatre, performance and dance. The performance, as the director writes, “will go beyond the social experience of coronavirus itself, looking at people and their stories through the lens of a new, changed and essential being together. Physically, mentally, socially and politically.”
The texts in the performance are inspired by anonymous testimonies collected by Renata Piotrowska-Auffret during the working process.