Kat Valastur

Lang

Fri 27 & Sat 28 April | 19.30-20.15 hrs | Theater Kikker

Buy your tickets for Fri 27 April
Buy your tickets for Sat 28 April
 

What is Lang?

"Lang is a line. Lang is a linear gesture. Lang is representation. Lang is a constantand circular representation. Lang is the circular representation of a linear gesture."

The circularity of this work corresponds to time. Through Lang time is divided into ist physical and existential element. The relation that occurs between these two elements determines life's rivalry. The dynamic of this rivalry can be reflected in nature through the effect of concentric rings on the surface of the water . This effect was my motivation for my kinetic research. At first I chose to stand still as a way of provoking my own ability as a dancer. I rejected my capacity, in order to allow the movement to be revealed. I had first to sense this intervention through my consciousness by focusing in time's expansion. The dilation of time through consciousness created a void in which existential time occured and determined its opposition to physical time. But physical time will always predominate over existential time. The struggle between this two aspects of time is projected though a virtual expansion of the body.

The structure form of D.N.A corresponds to this perpetual expansion. The body consists of D.N.A. and D.N.A has a twisting form. Therefore the movement would be a twisting one. The twisting movement was finally my basic movement. Through twist, the body moves circular by provoking the linearity of physical time, which imposes the straight and forward walking process. Thus the body of the performer moves in continuous turns. The movement and its transformation happen with scholastic precision (frame by frame), compared to organic patterns like the pulse, the breath, the turning of a wheel, the circular movement of dawn and sunrise, the circular movement of life… and death. The body of the performer moves in relation to another body moving as well in continuous turns. Why another body? Because the world exists through the Other. This state is Lang's representation. The relation between the performers could be described in the way twins look alike but no one can tell which one looks like the other. In that sense the two performers are the reflectors of world's reduplication.

BIO 

Kat Válastur (born Katerina Papageorgiou in Athens) is a choreographer based in Berlin. She studied as a dancer at the Hellenic State school of Dance. In 2000 she continued her studies at the Trisha Brown Studio in New York as as the Fulbright Foundation awarded her with a full scholarship. In the years that follow she researches upon solo work and the multiplicity of its reflection in choreography through adLibdances, a meeting point for artists of different fields in which representative art is questioned and researched. In 2007 she moved to Berlin to continue her studies at the MA program Solo/Dance/Authorship of Hochschulübergreifendes Zentrum Tanz and Universität der Künste Berlin.

Her artistic discourse starts with the major question “ What is there left to be danced ?” Her work reveals a space of forces in which kinetic systems are experienced in the same way as a ritual is experienced within the forces of society, reducing the above question into “What has the society forgotten to dance”. One way to approach this is by taking a divergent look backwards in the same way as Angelus Novus by the painter klee according to Walter Benjamin's ninth thesis on history is representing that... “His face is turned toward the past...but the storm is blowing in from paradise...the storm irresistibly propels him into the future”.

The principal of divergence becomes then fundamental in her working process through the belief that the area of divergence is probably the only area in which we can could sense the lapse of cultural cliches.

“Thinking that the image is a reflection, I want to break the mirror (and the reality that this image represents), by creating a different image, instinctively putting together the fragments”

PRESS QUOTES

We should remark especially Kat Válastur, a red-haired arsonist, who represented the best part of the Scholeion stage, the school of Irene Papas. On the ground, in a grid of light and in a black tee-shirt the dancer arouses little by little in a unique trance. Her choreographic vocabulary boroughs elements from urban dancing and at the same time from the modern tragedy. From the back and with a simple repetitive gesture of her arms, she  captures her audience. A voice, this of Rena, accompanies her departure. A rare sight. (Les Echos, 04.08.2008) 

One discovery, Kat Válastur, and one giant, Michail Barischnikov - a flight to high levels for the festival in Athens and Epidaurus.  Her dance solo “What scratches the glass from inside” was really astonishing and she became for one evening our Goddess of Athens. (Les Inrockuptibles, 04.08.2008)

«I don’t mix up the art with taste» She  managed to steal the show in this year’s “Athens Festival”. Although she only danced one solo with the strange title “What scratches the glass from inside”. What defines her personal vocabulary is the co-existence of the tragic and the political body on stage. (Eleftherotipia, 28.08.2008)

The body, while cutting the space in two horizontal parts, welcomes the stillness as its authentic moment. The legs are deeply rooted in the ground and seem not to come off the floor. The upper body answers with a continuous movement. The hands are floating and seem to create a solo in the solo. They are mapping the space geometrically, while marking a journey of an internal stage of being, which comes to climax. The choreographer compares this climax with a weather phenomenon. (PerformArt, 11. 2008)

The festival was opened by a gala evening which presented new choreographies by last year's winners. The duo " Lang"  with an unusual eely movement as if coming from an unknown dimension, remained the most original piece of the whole festival (in Prague, 24.11.2008)