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End on Mouth has first
been developed and shown in Istanbul. A second time it was shown in Utrecht
and then travelled to ‘s-Hertogenbosch en then to Leiden. In every station
it had a new approach.
In Utrecht the
‘choreography’ was the same as in Istanbul, where End on Mouth was performed
for the first time in Platform Garanti. Two big wooden podia are found in
the space, one on the floor, one leaning against the wall. With collective
force, the lying podium was for several moments lifted up and held at eye
level by a group of carriers that emerged from the public watching the
performance in the space. The space’s architectural column pierced the
podium and functioned as an ‘anchor’.
Davids reverses the idea
of a podium as a tool for ‘being on stage’: instead of letting them perform
on the podium, Davids directs the three actors and the three musicians
inside the podium. From this confined position they are expected to perform
their text and music. Hidden like this, their live presence manifests itself
in the vocal capacity of the body. The unity between voice and body is
interrupted; the desire to identify sound visually is frustrated. The text
of the play which the actors express and on which the music is based, is
about the voice: the voice as the conduit for human expression and
manifestation. But Davids contends that in the same act we are expressing
ourselves, we also disappear. “You see, when we talk, we are breathing out;
expression has to do with the physical action of emptying ourselves. Every
time we talk, we die a bit.”
Every presentation of End
on Mouth relates directly to the space. In ‘s-Hertogenbosch the
location was an empty factory hall with massive floor space. Here the
movement of the podia became more expansive and complex. The stage with the
musicians was lifted up and down again repeatedly. The second podium
containing the actors was rolled over and over through the space by the
carriers. From the openness and the expansiveness of the ‘s-Hertogenbosch
event, Davids returns, in Leiden, to the compact situation of a closed space
on human scale where the podia again will have a more static position’. The
physical effort will find its expression this time in endurance, referring
to the 70’s tradition of performance art. Here she’ll question the tension
between the gaze and the voice which leads the piece into an actual
discussion. In this respect End on Mouth manifests itself as an iconoclastic
longing for opening new registers of perception.
Frederique Bergholz,
program If I Can't Dance
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