LT Artists in Europe – Gretė Šmitaitė, Dovydas Strimaitis

May 6

Ukmergės kultūros centras, 19:00

CRACKS (Grėtė Šmitaitė), duration: 20 min.

Cracks starts from the dystopia caused by being alone. Yet, the person cannot manage to stay ‘one’. Being cracked and multiple, the person hides one’s complexity and so violates oneself. Scratching one’s robustness, one meets oneself striving to relate.The person lays down on the ground. The rain is falling on one’s cheeks. The wind is in the branches above one’s head. One starts to feel an overwhelming desire to relate with oneself and other living and dead humans, places, animals, plants and seasons.

HAIRY 2.0 (Dovydas Strimaitis), duration: 20 min.

Hairy 2.0 is a choreographic piece for a dancer and his hair. Hair is one of the few parts of the human body that one cannot move voluntarily and directly. Choreography and dance, on the other hand, can be seen as an art of physical (self-)control. Choreographing hair, thus, carries in itself a dramatic tension – how to control the uncontrollable. This tension is the starting point of Hairy 2.0. Because of its uncontrollable nature, hair can be seen as an entity separate from our body, yet dependent on it. Hair is a boundary, limit both separating us from and connecting us to what is physically outside of us, what is not us. A choreography made for hair thus raises ontological questions related to our identity, our body and its autonomy. Loose long hair has very strong symbolic meaning in the Western society. It invokes freedom, romanticism, naturalness, and liberation from tradition or oppression. Strimaitis uses all these symbols as a formalist tool in order to develop counterpoints not only in timing and space, but also in meaning.

Free admission