"It Might Be Your Last
Day"
Radek Hewelt and Filip
Szatarski dance a "Clever Project" at WUK Vienna.
The arts sector benefits from the crisis - provided it is
clever. Or rather, provided all sorts of art dealers, agents and speculators
are clever. The two performers Radek Hewelt and Filip Szatarski - aka The
Clever Team - want to be as clever as possible. That is why their "Clever
Project", which currently premiered at WUK Vienna, is so touching.
The
two performers are well aware that there is no large profit to be made in
contemporary dance. Still, it should at
least be possible to place a few bets on it. This is put to the test here. The
audience knows right away about their first bonus of the evening: They get ten
performances for the price of one.
At the beginning, a song for
two voices defines the basis of a proper speculation: "Tomorrow, when you
open your eyes and you look through your window, remember: It might be the last
day of your life." Right, it is the
mood that counts! The awareness that death might be at your doorstep creates a demand
for whatever you would still like to indulge yourself in.
Becoming
a tree, for example. Even in the theater, if need be. With your life at stake,
dreams are in great demand. The same goes for meditation, just in case you
might become a bit tight. So, the Clever Team - with plenty of commonplace
phrases - guides the audience through a group meditation, which soon dissolves into
the nirvana of an opera spoof.
At this point, the piece
turns into a pearl of irony, which gets even bigger, as Radek Hewelt grabs his
ukelele and - tender at first, then with more and more rock 'n' roll force - sings
the same line over and over: "When I was young, smoking, fucking, drinking
all the night, my mind was drugged." The sentimental values of rock 'n' roll
are a safe bet these days, just as those of high culture.
Why? As an answer, the two
performers tell their own biographies. Good choice. Firstly, because this
always works, and secondly, because it is a way for us to understand our own
finite lives better.
Radek and Filip set out
together to find the Holy Grail, to conquer the world. They suffered hunger and
rejection, invented a healing-method - and the first projector. They thought
they were the center of the world. Until dark clouds loomed over the horizon
and a "Stagnator"-monster descended upon them.
It won´t be revealed here how
the Clever Team mastered this crisis. Yet something obvious needs to be said:
This piece is a both excellent and poignant satire on crises and emotional
speculation in our cultural life.
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