FIGURE THIS Anna Krzystek, Tramway, Glasgow, 18/03/09

ROBERT BEATON

One could go on for a long time about the genius and wonderful execution of Anna Krzystek’s dance performance: she was absolutely superb! But, there was much more happening in Tramway 4 than a bunch of us watching Anna dance. This is a work that brings audience and performer into the same shared force-field to meet with real-live intelligence in the setting of the theatre. This dance trilogy plays with our perceptions and perspectives of performance as well as concepts of transformation or resolution. Playfully and perplexingly we are engaged in ideas current in contemporary field theory and as ancient as medieval alchemy.

I entered Tramway 4, somewhat expecting just to be in an audience to view an ‘ontologically separate and distinct’ performance across a notion of a proscenium arch and on a staged set. Before sitting down, I noticed that the performance had already started; the figure was already on stage. I began to feel that my getting seated, before this still stage-presence, was part of the night’s show. There was also a sense of looking into momentary presences in the more remote and contained spaces seen in the videos images on the television picture tubes.

In the audience, sitting up front, on the edge just to stage left, I watched the back of grey wizard-haired Tom Murray. He sat focussed over a sound table array of knobs, switches and laptop images silently and continually adjusting, turning, reaching out, looking outwards into the happening onstage and then back again to push, pull, twist and turn to the adjusters. The stage was as a vessel or test-tube containing the matter to be transformed and Tom, the Conductor responding to the process of change before him.

A teenager of the 60’s, I felt as if I were witness to an experiential happening about 20th century TV tube technology. Then, I was aware that as an audience, we were experiencing what it might be like to be in inside a TV or radio cathode tube – a modern day alchemical retort, noisily buzzing with a century of canned figures of musical harmony and discord, moving and still-life, news and entertainment, the trace of an actual smile and the repeated recording of an applause. Anna’s strong embodied presence responded to all of these. We were, in effect, experiencing being in the same experimental container with the figure, undergoing a bewildering bombardment of sound, no sound, movement, no movement, motion forwards and backwards, repetition and chaos. Tramway 4 had become a giant test-tube and both audience and performance, the matter inside it being changed by the noise of life.

In the end, after three-in-a-row dance pieces, the figure, not only had endured but stood as a transformed presence looking back at us, luminous and golden in the blackness of the stage; and we, the audience, revitalised by the process.

Robert Beaton

A CHIASMA OF CHANGES
- stillness and vast landscapes in Anna Krzystek's choreography

ANNIKA TUDEER

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Stubborness is not regarded as a virtue - we live in a time when ‘dynamic flexibility’ is what's desirable. But replace stubborn with persistent and we can start to embrace the idea. Where the word stubborn creates a negative image of petulance and awkwardness, persistence speaks of determination and dedication. So, to be stubborn and persistent is at the core of any successful artist; not giving up, persisting in one’s ideas and the furthering of them. In Anna Krzystek's case, persistence is also part of the aesthetic of her choreography. The choreography is persistently continual, like a chiasm by Enschlers where the structure never ends. The images she creates on stage are persistently etching themselves onto the retina of the viewer, staying there long after the images no longer exist in real time.
Looking at Anna Krzystek's body of work I am more reminded of visual arts than dance. This says more about the state dance is in at the moment, with dance pieces so often like fast-food entertainment, than an actual blurring of genres. Because it is very much dance Anna Krzystek is working with, basically adhering to the idea of abstract shape in space, always taking the work somewhere where the abstract shapes give rise to strong atmospheres, associations and even a feeling of sublimity.

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ABSTRACT SHAPES IN SPACE
What do we mean by abstract shapes in space besides sculptures? Although Anna Krzystek's work might be considered spare and sculpturesque, I would rather say that the work consists of a dense texture of intricate patterns of never-ending movement. The movements themselves stem from distinctly articulated parts in the body. The directions of the movement cast invisible lines into space. Twisting of the torso, lifting of legs, circling the head and upper body, sudden falls, balances that lead into a surprising direction, as well as the frequent use of pedestrian movements ñ walking and standing as part of the oeuvre, might sound like a lot of action. Well, there is and there is not, which makes the work so thrilling. Despite the clarity of the movements in her work they are rarely laden with meaning. You could even say that the movement is kept at an austere distance from the dancer dancing it. This relationship between the movement and the dancer creates an inherent tension. And now you can answer Keats’ question whether you can differ between the dancer and the dance with a confident yes. Yes, you can discern between the dancer and the dance whilst watching the two dancers moving through the duets Zero Into The Void and Stripped or watching Anna Krzystek dancing the solo The Wait. You can also discern between the movement, the space and the tempo being used. The entities are never blurred but distinct in their own right, and yet they are all part of the same universe ñ the same work.

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Instead of movements conveying meaning it is the combinations of the most essential compositional tools - rhythm and structure that creates meaning in Anna Krzystek's work. One can of course claim that any movement per definition is an abstraction, since movements convey an idea or become a symbol or a sign. Whereas movement as a sign creating meaning is frequently used in today's conceptual dance, I would argue that Anna Krzystek's use of movement is somewhat different. She creates a texture with the individual movements where all the parts of the composition creates meaning. Although the movements are precise, they are not precious. They have a light quality surrounding them that gives you the impression that if one lift of the leg doesn’t work another one could substitute it. What is not that interchangeable is the positions and directions on stage in relation to the possible objects on stage, the space itself as well as the other dancer ñ in the case when there is another dancer, as in Zero Into The Void (2000) and Stripped (2002).
ON CHANGES AND PERCEPTION
Anna Krzystek's Cunningham and Cage background is visible in the use of the body in the space, as well as in the feeling of unpredictability. The jagged and even erratic rhythm creates an atmosphere of being on the edge. You recognise the sequences and the movements, but when they reoccur they are presented from a slightly different perspective. There is always something recognisable and yet something new being conjured. This change of perception gives rise to a sense of fascinating uncanniness. The basic concept running through her work, whether it’s an idea of a ground hog day as in Stripped or waiting as in The Wait, is the foundation of the visual world and the atmosphere pervading the choreography. The usually simple and therefore beautiful structure of the pieces is the solid foundation. They don’t follow an Aristotelian structure where after the climax the piece is resolved into a profound change.

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Nevertheless, change is very much part of Anna Krzystek's work. In the duet Zero Into the Void the changes occur subtly and gradually in front of your very eyes, you are not even aware of them taking place before the balance of the two dancers have already shifted in space. Despite every moment being fully exposed to the watching eye in the slowly changing light, you haven’t actually seen the changes happening. In Zero Into The Void I am taken by the subtle changes occurring throughout the piece in the vein of a conjurer: now you see it, now you don’t. All of a sudden the dancers have travelled across the stage, changing places without you even realising that it happened, or all of a sudden they are doubling up in a twin position. Anna Krzystek plays joyful tricks with perception to the extent that although the dancers seem to be still, they are always moving.
In Stripped small changes are also happening inside and during the three sections of the piece. However, the major changes occur between the parts. There is a radical, even brutal change of lighting and space. The changes play as much with perception as in the previous piece but in a quite different way. First the dancers are dancing close to the audience in a restricted area screened off by light. The first stunning change happens as both dancers stand with their backs to the audience on the border of the darkness when suddenly the light changes. Now they are facing the light, standing there like negatives from the previous picture with darkness on their backs. Through this simple light change an enormous shattering change has taken place. This is enhanced by the perfectly timed 'bang' from the soundtrack. And a stunning banging shift it is. In the third section the whole space has opened up.

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In The Wait the sudden head circles in different directions is a subtle and yet radical climax created by very small means. After that act something has shifted fundamentally. This effect is achieved by the preceding actions that are rather subdued. Through the use of minimal shifts something small & subtle immediately becomes big and focused.

SUBTLE PAIN
The world that we are drawn into, especially in the duets, is filled with serene relentless pain. The head circling sequence in the solo The Wait is approaching the art of bodily pain that can be found in performance art. When Anna Krzystek circles her head again and again only changing the direction of where to stand, it approaches a limit of watchability, yet it is utterly fascinating. The question of whether she will keel over or not is not as prominent as the feeling of bodily pain. No, she will not keel over, not even waver, she regains her balance perfectly. However, the pain conveyed is more in the vein of Bataille than giving rise to pity. A non-compromising pain that is at the core of the very existence in being human.

TAIL BITING ACTIVITIES
When you look at Anna Krzystek's body of work you can see it as a series. A trilogy where the works are interlinked in such a way that they seemingly never end nor begin. When the light goes on, the dancers are already moving as if they were always there. This impression of endlessness is another link to the world of visual arts. Whereas dance is considered an ephemeral art form compared to the solidness of visual arts, by devising an illusion of endlessness Anna Krzystek conjures the idea that the dance doesn’t disappear.

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What happens when the piece is finished is that it simply stops. By then we have been watching so many stops, pauses and continuations during the evening that this 'final' stop becomes just one more beginning. And it is actually a beginning of a new piece of work, although there might be a long real-time span between the works. The same neverendingness that is inherent in the movements runs through Anna Krzystek's body of work. One piece of work links into the previous as well as it leads into the coming works. However, at some point another approach might appear and a new series is begun. I think that The Wait as part of the up-coming full length piece TEST – The Wait might be such a point. Whereas the previous two duets, albeit having a concrete starting point, are highly abstracted works placed in the black box space, making simple but beautiful use of a theatre space to create a ephemeral piece of visual art, The Wait has a more theatrical touch.
The title of the piece gives a clear context for the work. When we see the woman in black pacing the space, we are aware of a feeling of anticipation by slight flicks of the head and darting looks. We are fed by conceptualized ideas of waiting and the multi-faceted process that lies behind the piece. A look is both a look filled with meaning created by the shifting ways of looking: a darting look, a look in the mirror as well as the look as an isolated movement. Here abstraction isn’t the overwhelming feeling. Meanings are created in how she waits, how she anticipates and how she flicks between fast and sudden movement and stillness. Although it might sound like a contradiction, I would say that The Wait is action-packed, although very little visible physical movement takes place. But there is so much going on that is barely visible to the eye that one is rather filled with impressions after seeing the piece - yet another example of the exquisite contradictions juxtaposed in Anna Krzystek's work.

[Copyright ANNIKA TUDEER 2004]

Annika Tudeer (Finland) is a performer and director of Helsinki based inter-disciplinary company Oblivia. She is also a freelance writer, writing articles and reviews on dance in journals and newspapers in Finland as well as internationally.
This essay was commissioned by The Centre for Contemporary Arts, Glasgow with support from The Scottish Arts Council.