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FACE ON, New Territories International Festival of Live Art, March 2011
Mary Brennan, The Herald
Krzystek’s total immersion in the physicality and intention of every nuance is like a magnet.
You watch, riveted by the channelling of ideas through rigorously focused limbs. The wonderment at her technical prowess and the scope of the material kicks in afterwards – and, believe me, that impact doesn’t fade with the years.
Face On is the fourth instalment in Krzystek’s ongoing encounter with the nature of being, and performing. Daniela De Paulis’s videos – shown, feet apart, on two monitors – offer monochrome glimpses of Krzystek’s face in various facets, including a fleeting smile. Tom Murray’s soundscore crackles and alarms across shifts of pace and decibel stridency.
Within this carefully mapped-out framework, the black-clad Krzystek fills an unstinting hour with choreographed motifs that sometimes isolate movement in one part of her backwards-travelling body, sometimes send movement coursing through her like an electric current and sometimes propel her in all directions before her gaze, as ever, returns to confront us. It’s a multi-dimensional jigsaw of profound concepts, captured images and real-time performance that has shared experience at its visionary core.
Laura Cameron Lewis - The Scotsman
“I was 16 years old, in a gym hall with lots of other kids, and there was a dancer doing this abstract movement to a soundscore,” recalls Anna Krzystek of the moment that sealed her choice of career. “The kids were all screaming and shouting and throwing things at this poor performer and I thought, that’s it. This is what I want to do with my life.”
Told with an impish smile, this story reveals a lot about Krzystek, a quiet, reflective but incredibly strong performer who has boldly done her own thing regardless of people’s reactions. In the dance world, where women’s bodies are subjected to intense critical scrutiny, Krzystek is a rarity. After years of honing her craft she is now in international demand, but as a young woman she was repeatedly told she wasn’t tall enough, thin enough, flexible enough or pretty enough to be a dancer. It’s a success that has constantly inspired me in my job at the Work Room in Glasgow - where Kryzstek (who is actually strikingly beautiful) has developed two of her shows - and it seems particularly worth celebrating today, on International Women’s Day.
Not one of those stage school kids, Krzystek didn’t attend dance classes as a child growing up in East London and says she wasn’t interested in anything artistic. “Maybe I’m wrong in saying that,” she adds, reconsidering. “As a child I was always one of life’s observers. so that aspect was there from day one. There’s always been something about me looking at the world like a big installation, finding how things connect.”
But in the gym hall that day something changed irrevocably for Krzystek. In that dancer’s challenging performance she experienced a sharp break with the world she already knew. “It created a space to breathe, to think, like being in a clearing and I could take a deep breath and say I don’t have to be like these other kids, screaming and saying this is boring, I can just be myself.”
This wasn’t easy, however. “The first obstacle was, ‘you’re too old and your body is incorrect’. I wasn’t into sports so I was badly co-ordinated. I looked incredibly clumsy and not at all serene and ‘dancerlike.’” Krzystek prefers not to dwell on this. “I don’t want any violins!” she laughs. Rather than feel sorry for herself, she explains, she simply “went somewhere where people told me ‘yes you can do it.’”
This was New York, where she spent three years training with legendary dancer and choreographer, Merce Cunningham. “I’m so very grateful for that. My work is very far away from his, but things that have stemmed from his thought process have been incredibly influential to me. The beautiful thing was that even though they danced as an ensemble it’s embedded in his work that you are an individual within that, and you do it how you do it.”
Like Krzystek, Cunningham had struggled to make work within a system that didn’t initially support his ideas. For dancers of both sexes, the traditional western dance forms enforce a strong gender archetype. “In classical ballet, usually young, childish girls are being manipulated by these big, superior type men… princes and warriors,” says Krzystek. “But in contemporary dance and ballet there are many strong female dynamic dancers. The beauty of Cunningham is that the movement is shared between men and women and they are expected to be able to do the exact same thing.
“I haven’t really particularly thought of myself as a feminist,” she considers, “but I do think there is, after all this time, such inequality. In dance you can get a way with murder as a male, because there are so few men that as long as you are interested and have a smile on your face you’ve got the job. But women have to push and be more competitive and fight to get a look in.
“Ultimately I didn’t want to exist in that so I had to create my own way. In dance training you are taught X, Y and Z but as an artist perhaps only Z is the thing that stands out for you. There’s so much in dance that is not important to me and if I hang onto those things it would be so detrimental, so I have to let them go and hold on the essence of what’s important - to me.
“I’m doing it more and more and in that sense I’m finding a strength within myself and what I’m doing. I could relate that to a kind of feminism, that I have to do things the way I choose to do them, but I will remain quiet and don’t do the hobnobbing. I’m not the life and soul of the party. I’m quite happy not ever going to a party in my life. It’s not a negative, it’s a strength, and if I can channel all my energies into the work I do then there’s a strength there.”
Krzystek’s devotion is almost monastic. On a typical day she rises at 6am, reads and then goes to work in the dance studio for eight hours before going home again to work on her admin and reflect on the day’s work. She rarely takes a day off over the 12 weeks of studio time, and combining that with preparation and reflection it takes the best part of a year to make one of her performances. She is renowned for her fastidiousness and attention to detail, in the exquisite painterly atmospheres of her live performances.
Krzystek has a deep respect for her audience, and each performance is the chance for her to offer them a new perspective, a clearing. “The artist is always asked to take risks, it’s the thing people desire from artists, but a programmer might not take risks because they consider that their audiences are not able to engage with that kind of work. I don’t tell stories but I do engage with my audiences, and yes the ideas need a bit of thinking about but the work itself is wholly available and there is no risk. I have a lot of respect for my audience, I think that people are very clever and that they can see and hear and engage with more than what is thought possible.”
Krzystek’s new show, Face On, is the most intimate and challenging thing she has ever made. “Nothing is hidden, it’s all there to be seen and I’m facing up to those consequences,” she says. “As a performer I’m co-existing with a filmed sequence and a soundscore. It awakens your sensibilities that things can happen in the same space and time, it’s not one space or other and you can acknowledge every one of them for the good and the bad.”
Performances like Face On offer an experience of openness and a place for personal and political contemplation, “It’s about exploring ways of co-existing in the world,” she says. “My work is quite violent at moments; there is violence around and you can’t escape from it, but there are moments that are very beautiful.”
Krzystek’s ideas on co-existence are inextricably connected to her desire for tolerance, and for difference to be celebrated. “As a human being I connected with that dancer who was making abstract shapes, and the majority of my peers at the time didn’t, but just because I was brought up in that kind of environment at that time with those kinds of people, then the implication is that I’m then not allowed to see certain things in my own way - there’s a preconceived idea of what I will like and what I won’t like. I just don’t understand that at all. I think people can make up their own minds up, in their own way, in their own time as well. We don’t have to get the whole picture straight away, it can keep leading us on to somewhere else.”
Face On is at Tramway, Glasgow, tonight, as part of the New Territories festival.
Laura Cameron Lewis is creative co-ordinator of Tramway-based dance space The Work Room.
8th March 2011
TRILOGY, Anna Krzystek, Tramway, Glasgow, 18/03/09
Mary Brennan, The Herald
Star rating: ****
Hands on hips, Anna Krzystek stands centre stage and gazes, unblinkingly, ahead of her. She holds the space - the dark oblong of Tramway 4 - and us in the sheer force-field of her sustained stillness. When she moves, that magnetic pull shifts gear but never loses concentration: a long balance, fixed on one leg, seems to stop time while sequences of rapid, repetitive steps - done over and over with a determined precision - generate an aura of profound meditation
coupled with a flow of fierce, kinetic energy that is, at its core, purely cosmic.
No-one in Scotland, or the UK for that matter, originates work like the trilogy Krzystek presented on Wednesday night. Three solos - Test (2005), Still (2007) and Figure This (2008) - each lasting 45 minutes, asserted not only Krzystek's mental and physical stamina, but her capacity for the kind of intellectual processes that few
choreographers are equipped to explore.
She cites the premise of waiting' as the starting point that connectsall three solos. She begins with her own presence, clad always in a simple black tunic, then engages stillness and motion in various conjunctions with sound scores (devised throughout by Tom Murray) or videos that spool on floor-level monitors.
As movements and pace, sound and visual images alter, Krzystek's choreography delves into fascinating aspects of time and space - glimpsing her on screen even as she performs on stage brilliantly catches notions of now and then/here and there'.
The new solo, the physically demanding and meticulously detailed Figure This, has a humorous sound score punctuated with ecstatic applause.
Krzystek's trilogy certainly merits our bravos - as does the New Territories' decision to commission and support this exceptional, radical talent.
ANNA KRZYSTEK - TEST, STILL AND FIGURE THIS
The complete trilogy was performed at Tramway on Wednesday 18 March 2009 as part of New Territories.
STILL, Anna Krzystek, Toynbee Studios, London 9th October 2007
Chris Goode
I was at Toynbee Studios last night (or, as it emerged mangled from the memorybanks of one of my students earlier in the day, T-Bone Studios) for a showing of work by the dancer/choreographer Anna Krzystek and the filmmaker Lucy Cash. It was one of the most enthralling and exciting evenings out I've had in a long while. Still is a 45-minute piece which places a solo performer (Krzystek) in a room with five video monitors (showing material by Cash) and a sound artist, Tom Murray, live-mixing a prepared score. Sitting, as it does, exactly on the virgule between installation and performance, or standing on both sides of it perhaps, it is partly an excercise in the manipulation of attention: a performer drawing and giving away attention, as well as giving it herself to the other elements of the piece, which she uses partly to orient herself. The body starts out as barely-present and somewhat object-like, but slowly (and expensively) uses the currents of spectatorial attention in the room to claim a constrained expressivity. The video images show views of and isolated elements within a room not dissimilar to the one we are actually in, but not the same; the domestic character and details of the video room also participate in the exercise of drawing and dispelling attention. In common with Krzystek's previous piece, which I didn't see, one theme is waiting: and she speaks eloquently and intriguingly afterwards about how the domestic objects that the camera dwells on are also 'waiting' -- for human intervention: the telephone waiting to ring, the lamp waiting to be switched on, the plug socket in the wall... There is a warmth to this which somewhat alleviates a (by no means unattractive) starkness in the rest of the aesthetic. The sound score mostly consists of penetrating sines, introduced, subtly altered (e.q., I think, and certainly panning) and then withdrawn; there is a structral matrix determining much of the activity, a series of time regions and of tasks, five sections of nine minutes, each further subdivided in interlocking frames. There is a remarkable formal clarity to the piece which comes across strikingly even before the structure is explained, but also a deeply human(e) tenor. The sense of effort, of slight confusion, of loss of centre, of submission, in the performer is cumulatively moving and important. One particularly touching repeated gesture is the abrupt withdrawal of the electronic sound at some moments, at which points very often Krzystek's exhausted breathing is suddenly audible, both rhythmically continuous with the geometries of the piece and infinitely more faulty and therefore more intimate. Long periods of near-stillness and near-silence near the end, which demand as much of the audience as of both performers, are followed by a condensed, slightly puzzling coda which brilliantly reclaims some measure of privacy for the authors, lest the plain legibility, the near-transparency, of much of the activity should too quickly allow the complex human agency in the work to be dissipated or undervalued. It is exactly the right ending to exactly the right piece.
A concluding discussion led by the filmmaker Miranda Pennell was generously illuminating, finding its own pitch and pace and acutely focused on unfolding rather than pinning-down, and on the expansive (and the searching) rather than the competitive. I could have happily sat there for the rest of the evening, listening and talking and enjoying.
October 2007
STILL, Anna Krzystek, New Territories, Tramway, Glasgow 20th February 2007
Mary Brennan - The Herald
Dance artists who feature in Nikki Millican's New Territories usually have a radically bold take on choreographic practice.
The opening programme certainly side-stepped the mainstream with persuasive conviction, producing work that rewarded necessary concentration by sending our thoughts and imaginings into energising freefall.
STILL, choreographed and performed by Anna Krzystek, with live sound score by Tom Murray and film by Lucy Cash, pitches in between a solo of thrillingly controlled, starkly delineated movement and an art installation. Five monitors, ranged across the space, pass around shifting images of another room in another time. Real time is punctuated by high pitched pulses, low dronings, outbursts of abrasively scratchy noise. Within this context, Krzystek's body writes her repeating loops of precise action: head pivoting in detailed searches, foot probing and mapping the floor, every move a study in uncluttered, poised intensity, the moments of stillness every bit as compelling. It's as if you're spying on different dimensions at once - and it's fascinating.
21st February 2007
TEST - The Wait, Anna Krzystek, CCA, Glasgow 27th November 2004
Kelly Apter, The Scotsman
ANNA Krzystek spent an entire year bringing TEST to the stage. So it comes as no surprise to find the inspiration behind her solo was the concept of "waiting". One of the highlights of the CCA's live art festival last weekend, Test perfectly captured that limbo sate between desire and fruition. Glasgow-based Krzystek is one of the most interesting choreographers Scotland has to offer, operating at the cutting edge of contemporary dance. On paper, Test sounds excruciating: 50 minutes of slow movement, long stares, repetition and the incessant crackle of a radio lost between frequencies.
In reality, Krzystek had us in the palm of her hand. Her langorous movements were performed with such precision, such incredible balance, they couldn't fail to captivate. The long stares and moments of stillness carried almost as much weight as the short bursts of swift activity. And when Krzystek unplugged the radio with a dramatic tug, there was no sigh of relief, just a powerful sense that her waiting had come to an end.
1st December 2004
TEST - The Wait, Anna Krzystek, CCA 21st March 2004
This review comes in two parts: 1. A concise review of the performance by myself and 2. Anna Krzystek’s responses to some questions I asked her by email which I thought were of value when placed alongside the review.
1.
This was something special. A white gallery studio with a table, a chair and a radio tuned to static. One performer dressed in black walks in the space looking at the audience and the room around her, mostly scanning and occasionally looking at something or someone. She stops moving for a moment and then slowly and precisely performs a clear move. What followed were a sequence of durations, some in which she performed a move, or was moving, or was just there. This was the piece and nothing else, at one point the static on the radio changed, this was a major event. The first time her hands twitched seemed like a massive flourish.
The piece was demanding on the audience, we spent our time glued to our seats craning forwards, focused on every tiny detail. The movement while done with clarity and precision, was not what I was really paying attention to. I was watching and experiencing the movement’s relation to time. Time was altered by the piece, in each moment I was aware of my personal sense of time changing, moving in and out of synch with the white walls of the space, the white noise of the radio, the audience and Krzystek. It was Krzystek’s presence, movement and her negotiation of time through her movement that achieved this.
What was distinct about the performance was that it was not timeless but time-full, and it hinted at temporal endlessness. Any moment in the performance could have stretched out in our experience without limit, and that we might have never moved to the next section, or that that moment might still exist now without end.
The experience of ‘Test the Wait’ demonstrated Bersgon’s observation that time is made up of durations, units that expand and contract in relation to each other. Some time into the performance I checked my watch (finding it difficult to pull my eyes away from the stillness), thinking the performance must nearly be over. I was surprised and delighted to find that only fifteen minutes had passed. Kryzstek had done what I had seen no one else do for a long time. She had managed to make the experience of an enjoyable performance pass slowly rather than quickly.
Usually we observe that something enjoyable seems to happen too quickly for our liking and that bad experiences seem to take forever. The full-length version will be at the CCA in October. I’m thinking of travelling to Glasgow just to see it.
© Philip Stanier.
2.
ON TIME
" Throughout the piece time does become manipulated, stretched and condensed, but all the while there's a very even paced regularity that keeps the piece moving along. To tap into the quality of endlessness”
ON THE IDEA OF 'PRE'
" The density stems from the sparseness of the piece and from working with the concept of "pre". The piece, as you saw it, was thirty minutes in duration and yet I wanted it to seem endless. I, as the performer, am alone on 'stage' - there's nothing else other than the sound of the radio static to keep the audience's attention. Keeping the audience engaged in the work and providing a sense of infinite timelessness. Working with the idea of "pre" allows me to embody & present a state of being - that of waiting - while the temporal shifts allows the audience to engage in the work. On occasions it's necessary to witness & experience something that happens fast in order to focus on something subtle and visa versa. At other moments it's not important to witness anything at all as perhaps the sound moves to the foreground of attention. The somewhat strict temporal structures I choose are there to provide the viewer with freedom to compose their own variations of what they see and don't see, hear and don't hear."
THE QUIET PERFORMER
"The notion of developing a 'quiet' presence derived from wanting to challenge myself as a solo performer. The movement phrases in the piece are incredibly spare and precise. There's no excess or surplus movement. I am essentially performing very close to my audience, we are in the same room and share the same space, I can observe my audience as much as they observe me, (especially during the sitting at the table sequence), and because of this I wanted to develop an intimate quality. The preciseness demands a lot of concentration and I'm forced to stay very much in the moment and complete everything fully before moving to the next; and as I perform I have to be incredibly patient with myself. This level of immersion allows me to keep close to myself while at the same time command the attention of those watching."
WHITE SPACE / WHITE NOISE
" I was interested in creating this piece for a white space because I felt it necessary for the piece to be stripped of the obviousness of "theatre" whereby the audience cannot sit comfortably in the dark. In a white space the audience are forced to acknowledge their presence. Acknowledge themselves watching and listening and also being watched and listened to.
The white noise came about through associated thoughts relating to "pre". The static is neither one radio station nor another, it occupies an in-between state. The radio also provides an element of chance; the static can shift at any time. What seems to be an empty sound, a sound that represents "nothing", is actually very active, the subtle nuances and unexpected shifts are very powerful. I suppose in many ways they are very much connected and share a similar kind of "whiteness" - they both provide a place where the unexpected can be experienced."
Anna Krzystek.
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