ZAGREB RESIDENCY FESTIVAL NOVOG ... - Unpack the Arts

WHS – Kalle Hakkarainen – Nopeussokeus © Petri Virtanen
made up of prestigious collaborations with the
likes of fashion designer Jean Paul Gaultier and
the choreographer Philippe Découflé, but in
Zagreb their brand of new magic failed to
impress. Perhaps it was a mistake, and a brave
mistake, to show a short seven-minute unit of
a longer composite piece alone at the festival.
Gravitation is a solo work that examines the place
between the states of sleep and wakefulness, a
place free of gravity, through movement. Dressed
simply, in a black t-shirt and trousers, French
juggler François Chat merges dance with wooden
stick manipulation, attempting to be at one with
the stick, move as the stick, and levitate, but
never quite convincing.
Pioneers of the new magic movement, Cie
14:20’s company ethos is to campaign for an art
that emancipates our emotions. They want their
new magic to question the invisible and awaken
our senses to the sublime. Gravitation forms part
of their dance-magic-circus show Vibrations,
which “offers the discovery of this peculiar
language where the diversion of the real is
thought of as an artistic state, where the body is
not constrained any more by reality. Bodies stir
and are supple, freed from the law of gravity. The
movement and the physical reality are overthrown
by magic. Actors come in a state of weightlessness,
split themselves, and the movement
imprints its immaterial trace within the space.”
The intent is to make the viewer feel a changeable
gravity gives a new nature to objects, creating a
weightless world. Unfortunately in this instance
Gravitation did not work as a standalone act,
marred yet more because the audience could see
the stick’s puppeteer strings. Eschewing the
distraction of sets and costumes, or the charm
offensive of a character like Jean-Baptiste, the
success of the performance instead relied on the
fine execution of movement and circus skills, and
those were found to be lacking: the piece did not
capture the viewer’s trust and imagination as it
should have. It did not achieve what it set out to do.
After the interval came one of Helsinki’s more
experimental circus artists, Kalle Hakkarainen,
with Nopeussokeus (Speed Blindness/Motion
Blindness). Designed, directed and performed by
Hakkarainen, Nopeussokeus is a new magic
multimedia solo performance depicting the long
seconds when a body and a machine collide in a
car crash. The piece references the distorted
SUSIE WILD 59