On 14 June we performed Subtext on the opening night of the Doek Festival. We are Kaja Draksler, Marta Warelis (piano and small instruments), Michael Schumacher, Lily Kiara (dance) and Ellen Knops (lights). At the end of the concert (a new quintet of Michael Moore) and the performance, there was a talk about the piece and our collaboration and its relation to silence.
Listening is at the heart of this piece. Our entrance is our relation to space and how relationships and stories move and change or at times are held by where and how we are in space- and where and how we are spatially related to each other. The way we work together creates much ‘space of time’ , or a sense of stillness through the shared listening. Space feels closely related to stillness, deeply. Inside the body i often experience space as stillness. There can be different spaces but when i experience stillness, there is always also a sense of space. It’s an openness in which we meet, both as performers to allow the piece to form itself through our listening and actions- and also a meeting between performers and audience. This night it seemed to me clearly one space of listening and sharing.
Ben Taffijn wrote a wonderful review about the evening, in Draai om je oren, including about Subtext.
~ ‘…The music sometimes is refined, full of quiet, seemingly natural sounds, but often it is unusual, freaky and fierce what this quartet presents us with, musically as well as in the strong movements of Kiara and Schumacher.’
~’…A magnificent and daring project, this Subtext which crosses borders, that surely deserves to be extended.’
(whole review in Dutch): https://draaiomjeoren.blogspot.com/2018/06/concert-doek-festival-2018-1-low-slow.html
Photos: Maarten van de Kamp
