Francesco Scavetta: And I just stood there, watching the sky and the people below

Norjalais-italialainen tanssiryhmä Wee tuo Suomeen viime vuonna kantaesitetyn teoksen And I just stood there, watching the sky and the people below. Teos on ironinen tutkielma keinotekoisista paratiiseista ja ääritilanteista, kokoelma outoja sattumia, surrealistisia eleitä ja puheita, tanssia ja videokatkelmia. Teoksen pohjimmaisena ajatuksena on nykyajan keinotekoisuus: emme elä enää oikeassa maailmassa, vaan kuvassa maailmasta. Missä kulkevat fiktion ja todellisuuden rajat – vai onko niitä?Italialaisen tanssija-koreografi Francesco Scavettan ja tanssija Gry Kipperbergin Oslossa vuonna 1999 perustama Wee on vuosien mittaan luonut oman taiteellisen universuminsa yhdessä ryhmän tanssijoiden kanssa. Norjan johtaviin nykytanssiryhmiin lukeutuva Wee on tunnettu virtuoosisesta liikekielestä ja omintakeisesta teatterillisuudesta, jotka yhdistyvät teosten moniulotteiseen tematiikkaan.    

LISÄTIETOA TEOKSESTA:

AND I JUST STOOD THERE is an ironic investigation on artificial paradises and extreme moments. It's a list of bizarre accidents, surreal gestures and talks, dance and video clips, which flows in a weird, paradoxical way. This loads of distillated situations invites us to examine how we relate to, and discriminate between, personal and impersonal, natural and constructed. The core of the performance lies in an expression of artificiality which contemporary experience is often based on: one of no longer living in the world, nor in the language, but the in the image of the world. The performance invites to focus on how different levels of communication sinks in our own perception, opening for a process of recognition and awareness.

The metaphor of ”the accident” is used to isolate a moment of crises as a key situation. An extreme situation can help us to force our daily perception of the reality. Throughout an investigation on visual and conceptual displacement/misplacement, the performance deals with our perception of the reality by deconstructing narrative scenes and, at the same time, visual and physical languages. Choosing the displacement/misplacement as a main formal principle, the piece exploits conventions and codes of representations of reality and the power of images being used for those processes. With a process of adding and removing, we play with the collapsing of the sense (and the signs) of the situations presented to us, challenging spectators expectations, delaying back-taste meanings and creating empathy by triggering ironic catches.

The spectator is invited to look at something that makes so much effort to be there, but instead seems to lack the thing that might explain why is it  there... Displacement is a close up of/for the imagination: we move forward, towards the object, towards the situation and transform our vision. We participate differently of it and are forced to question the reality. And at the same time our vision... 
 
AND I JUST STOOD THERE takes shape in a multiple divided space, dominated by  a white, enigmatic installation, akin to an undefined landscape, or environment physically displaced. The spatial relativisation and a certain denial of voyeuristic or external vision of the seated spectator implies, not only spatial, but also ideological similarity of the viewer and the viewed. 
 
The performance offers a disturbing, unconventional yet thoughtful insight to the sense of detachment generated by the anxieties and ambiguities of modern life.  The work deals with the modern condition of accelerated experience, as of driving/moving rapidly through the landscape, evoking feelings of transience, dreams and easy emptiness...The original transformation of the dance medium into the more theatrical context, enables the transfer for more delicate, intimate communication between the performers and the audience, introducing at the same time an authentic vision of the world that it tries to represent.                                                                                            
With this performance, Wee develops further a new cycle of investigations in the medium of dance, introduced within the last production Hey Dude, lets stick around a bit longer this time,  with  a dramaturgy where the development of the material is constantly fragmented and enfolds through different, often  confronted, levels of stage reality. The performance has been developed through cycle of workshops and residences in Oslo (NO), Dubrovnik (HR) and Cagli  (IT), and involves dancers and artists from Columbia, Spain, Norway, Croatia and Italy.