Ukraine — Sweden — Dance

By Dmytro DESIATERYK, The Day

The art of modern dance is a real “terra incognita” for the average Ukrainian spectator. No modern dance festivals are held in Ukraine, and foreign touring companies bypass our country. So, there are great hopes that this gap will be filled by the new joint project undertaken by Kyiv’s New Theater at Pechersk and the Swedish dance group Melo, which is supported by the Swedish Institute. It is part of a large-scale cultural project embracing music, photography and literature.

The Swedish dance group operates independently as a temporary group of dancers, musicians, and choreographers, who get together once in a while to create another project. They became acquainted with Ukraine and some Kyiv-based actors in 2005, at the Kyiv Travnevyi festival. The new performance, which our spectators are going to see, was staged by Ukrainians, while four Swedes were in charge of choreography and movement. The show, developed over a two-week period in Kyiv, will be staged in Kharkiv, Dnipropetrovsk, and Lviv.

Although the New Theater at Pechersk has its followers at least in Ukraine’s capital city, the Melo group is practically unknown in Ukraine.

“We came to the group from dancing, music,” say the Swedish performers. “Each of us has at least 10 years of personal creative experience.

“We don’t have any precise system. We like to experiment and to mix, and we try to amalgamate different styles. We perform a mixture of punk, gypsy, performance, dance, and the physical part is based on the new circus with lots of acrobatic elements. Spontaneous response and improvisation are very important.

“Our recent performance was inspired by Bulgakov’s novel The Master and Margarita and the writer’s family museum on Andriivsky Uzviz. After our excursion there, we came out and told each other that the world we had just seen was ours; that was the way we live and create...We talked about the characters and the atmosphere, and we created the play without developing the plot. We performed on opening night in Malmo. One journalist said it was Hamlet.

“We are not a repertory theatre. If our new play is successful, we will show it for a year, just like the Bulgakov one. We staged our first play in March 2005. There were 15 of us then — dancers, lighting engineers, costume designers. That play received positive comments, so the government even gave us some money. The year 2008 is completely booked. And one day we hope to get a producer.

“When we prepare a new play, for one week we just discuss what we are going to do. We have “on-the-floor rehearsals.” Then we start jamming and improvising. For discussions we invite an opinion group consisting of four persons, as a rule. We are interested in their views. Different people may be invited: architects, doctors, sound engineers. They share their thoughts, and we change some things. We used to produce a play in two months, now it takes us four.

“A typical performance lasts one hour, without an entr’acte. Everyone does everything: music, dance, and video. On stage are instruments and we dance with them, too. Even the lights and sound engineers take part in the performance.

“Sweden does not have a big audience for modern dance. That’s why we give street performances or invite the homeless to the bourgeois theaters where we perform.

We want to create art for the people, many different people. We strive to entertain them and make them think. But we do not touch political issues.

“We don’t have a leader, and we also observe gender equality. We want to demonstrate that we are all equal. The leadership depends upon the best-developed skills. We have different skills, so if somebody’s expertise in music is better, that person has the final word. It’s very important. We don’t have a director. We trust each other. It’s much better than individual leadership; our experience tells us so.

“You can express everything with dance and gesture. Words are easy for communication, but a gesture is everything. Music is the same, although there isn’t much difference. Dance is more abstract, which makes it more universally functional. You see, you and we don’t speak English perfectly, but we complement with gestures what we can’t express with words.”