Julie, with her charismatic presence stimulates challenges and entertains the audience. As the audience enters, she pursues elusive external motions engaging variety of subtle gestures and movements which give contours to the otherwise imperceptible thought formations. From the seemingly instinctual actions unfolds a behavioral pattern. Via Julie’s highly dramatic, to the point of mutual embarrassment personal dance-theater, I am able to follow the intricate play of intertwined observational and mimetic responses, self-observations, reactivity, stylization of reactivity, and histrionics as it becomes manifested through performativity par excellence. The urge to express the kind of feeling formation that is based on the suppressed emotional outbursts or immediate reactive response, and which does not correspond to the predictable scenarios, flourished into a reflection of the  ‘world’  as a social sphere in which the spectacle and experience of reality become inseparable. What moves the dancer? How are narratives, elucidations, potential ambiguities, memories and self-awareness within given circumstances, animated? Interruptions and returns to former identities, multiplications of intentions and depictions of social entanglements, in an almost Brechtian manner, expose cracks on the seemingly smooth surfaces of human exteriors. Transitory forms amuse, keep us spell-bound through the dynamic qualities of the spiraling motion; initiated in varied ways, engendering rhythmic changes, and kinesthetic zest; and through the engagement with the objects. Empty chairs briefly represent doubling of the auditorium through invocation of invisible observers under Julie’s directorial power; coffee in a disposable cup acts as a symbol of urban sleeplessness (drinking of which Julie rationally motivates); garish pink jacket fills the audience with expectations; felt pens which are used for writing down plans or doodling reminded me of the beginning of a working day in a cranky, still-sleepy kindergarten.

Marija Krtolica
March 2013