THE NUTCRACKER, is a 50 min solo dance-theatre performance for a dancer, voice recorder, 3 audio speakers and about 25kg Californian walnuts.
''For a very long time something has been knocking inside of me, knocking on my walls, pushing them from the inside. It is not a word, it is not a feeling, it is not a thought - it is Mike Tyson, or Grace Jones, or Mickey Rourke, or somebody else. Why?
The first response to this knocking was to dance, to physically open my body. Dancing allowed me to become one with the knocking, to give it space. Fascinated, I decided to analyse who it was that might be knocking. Why? How? To try and answer these questions, I came to DasArts and developed a practice that consisted of: living with the body as a container of multiple realities. In other words, the creation of specific conditions for my body to become a hospitable place for the physical presence of my Mike Tyson, Mickey Rourke and Grace Jones.
I devised a game that allows me to play with my perceptions, emotional states, memories, acts and thoughts in order to measure how much I’m conditioned by them, and to see what else can exist outside of what I know as me. It’s like a Ping-Pong game with the self: sending it away, receiving it back. It’s the feeling of liberation, the excitement of flying towards another body/mental state and the experience of alienation at loosing what’s most natural and accessible.''
Maria Kefirova
Concept, choreography and performance: Maria Kefirova
Artistic advisor, stenography and light: Miguel Angel Melgares
Rehearsal Director: Marina Kaptijn
Oeil exterieur: kg Guttman
Production of DasArts