Plartforma International Art Festival in Klaipeda

The 13th festival of contemporary art, Plartforma, took place in Klaipeda, LT from the 12th till the 18th of September 2019. Plartforma is an international festival where both Lithuanian artists and artists from abroad have their performances on the festival programme.

This year, three danish performances took part in the festival. These were MASS – Bloom Explorations by Recoil Performance Group, An Eve and an Adam by Granhøj Dans and V.O.M.P by Gunilla Lind Danseteater. The three performances have been curated by the Lithuanian producer Goda Giedraityte who experienced the performances when she attended CPH Stage in 2018, sponsored by DCI in Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania. Here she selected the three performances to take part in the Plartforma Festival.

MASS – Bloom Explorations

MASS – Bloom Explorations drawed a lot of attention and got several visitors partly because of the 200.000 mealworms who played a key role in the performance. As an intimate installation with just one performer and a bunch of mealworms, the spectator was given the opportunity to get particularly close to the installation. The visitors where welcome to enter the transparent dome made of plastic where they could explore and interact with the installation. It was all very sensuous; the performer was moving in a slow, meditative way to the sound of the eating worms. The spectator was invited to have a seat in a plastic couch while listening to a recording of a poetic text on a human being’s relationship to mealworms written by the Danish writer Ida Marie Hede.

The performance rose a lot of debate particularly because of the 200.000 mealworms. The debate wasn’t as much about the performance itself as it was about whether it was a fair matter that the mealworms was funded by public funds from the municipality.

V.O.M.P

The dance performance Vanity of Modern Panic sparks life and pink sausages into the discussion about our beauty-worshipping society. The performance questions why we are obsessed with the idea of keeping our body young, healthy and fit, instead of appreciating the aging process as a natural part of life. The performance aims to make the spectator consider his or her own relationship to body images in relation to that of society.

The performance opens to a scenography of an oval ring of various colures, shapes and sizes portraying pink textile sausages. Six dancers rise from the sausage wreath. Discreetly, they have been hiding between the textile sausages and they themselves have sausages mounted to their tightly-fitted nylon stocking. As spectators we are invited into this colourful pink world of a silicone pumped dance performance, which illustrates the hunt for the perfect body in a very humorous way.

The choreographer Gunilla Lind has succeeded with twisting humour into a highly debated topic as body-images where focus is on making us aware on how we perceive the bodies of ourselves and others.

An Eve and an Adam

Through the performance An Eve and an Adam, Granhøj Dans explores our relationship to natural nudity.

The performance portrays the contrasting relationship we have to nudity today: on one hand we see a tendency among young people to portray themselves in a sexualised manner on social medias. We are exposed to pornography in all kinds of shades and it is very easily accessible. On the other hand, children and young people feel uncomfortable showering in public spaces such as school’s locker rooms and public swimming pools. The performance raises an important topic and make the spectator reconsider the human relation to nudity.