Alexandra Bachzetsis with Cullberg
September 24-28, 2024
Elverket c/o Dansens Hus, Stockholm
Cullberg/Alexandra Bachzetsis - Exposure. Photo: Carl Thorborg. Courtesy of Dansens Hus
That Alexandra Bachzetsis, whose avant la lettre trajectory overlap between spaces of dance and contemporary art, paralleled only by a certain Faustian someone, is more than just a choreographer, evidences really quite at once at Elverket tonight. First; before there’s any perceptible traditional-stamped choreography, there is already performance modus that in quiet, self-possessed manner has begun without cues of “action” (it comes – but later) fired off and lights fading, to command the audience to engage full-on. Music doesn’t emerge until nearly 20 minutes of physical stage presence. Second; what does instead come through right off the bat is her references to art history; notably with Bruce Nauman as an ode to her footing, if you will, in visual arts, stressed further from the outset also per way of the multi-angular optics championed by the more obscure but seminal Barbara Probst. Exposure seems to rest on a few intentional conditions and pillars; one, sex is not always “sexy”, but it remains “attractive”, even as the piece “extracts” choreography from blatant violence, and boldly dares to go there, and not just from the intersection where lust ends and violence begins, but also from street-style brawling. Add to this; an interest in emphasizing choreography and movement in sporting and the idealization of the body therein, and adjacent fitness culture, and you realize over the 80 minutes’ running time of this opus that “everything goes” when sourcing this piece. Unabashedly. Bachzetsis is too seasoned of an artist to filter anything out because someone else would. This is not a piece that is contained in a time where an "animated portrait" of thirsty Richard Kern eyes would not have been scrutinized, or a fashion ad not blasted for aestheticizing sexual violence, but it seemingly relates back to the Ad Reinhardt stance of making art; "Art Is Art and Everything Else Is Everything Else”. And it is for sure thrilling with references “jump cutting” in a whirlwind from one place to another.
Cullberg/Alexandra Bachzetsis - Exposure. Photo: Carl Thorborg. Courtesy of Dansens Hus
If there’s some shared ethos with contemporaries like Gisèle Vienne and Florentina Holzinger, there’s also whiffs of 2000’s Bring it on, which to this date nearly 25 years laters still has not been surpassed in epitomizing cheerleading in pop culture, and puffs even of the many Kens' beach battle in last year’s “Gerwig Barbie”. You cannot not chuckle when the word “demure”, prefixed with the comparative determiner “more!”, is actually uttered commandingly on stage by one of the performers. Another pillar appears a dichotomy of sex in today’s lens being "performative", while old-school-growing-old-together-kind-of-love still being something that is very real and to believe in. The former is plenty substantiated by stagings with allusions to casting director couches and intimacy coordinators, while the latter gets its stunning moment in one of the strongest acts per a sappy love ballad, where the message is hammered in. I must say I loved the unexpectedness of it and how authentically it felt like a case for a Shangri-La’s style puppy love, where the person at home is the one you keep falling in love with and learning to know.
Cullberg/Alexandra Bachzetsis - Exposure. Photo: Carl Thorborg. Courtesy of Dansens Hus
Of course, sappiness won’t allowed sappy for too long before the visual orchestration sees yet another Greenaway-esque “The Cook, the Thief” spatial change, aided by memories of 90's Technetronic, and from there amping up the way to the infernal high note. An accidental condition for me is that Exposure is so “in(to) the body” that it never amounts to an out of body experience for me in my seat. It might come down to the feeling throughout that the stage and its seating and balance in the venue in relation to the audience and their distance has not quite been optimized for that. My brother pinches me reassuringly during the standing ovations that ensue after the end and whispers "loved it”. An epically good curator greets us telling us it was "epic". I’ll stick with a “great”, and a feeling that I’m too demure to find hot naked bodies the cause of excellence if lubrication between acts here and there runs a little short. I didn't expect it, but(t) it is what it is.
Ashik Zaman