Choreographer L.Baliasnaya presenting the premiere: I want to understand fear, because today we all feel it | Culture

In her new work, L.Baliasnaya explores the topic of fear as a political phenomenon. The artist claims that she does not take an activist position – rather, her work seeks to delve deeply into phenomena and offer new ways of interpretation. In the interview, L.Baliasnaja shares her thoughts about the feeling of fear in modern society, baroque inspirations, the politics of art and her eclectic creative world.

– Lisa, in the premiere “Chiaroscuro” your research object is fear. What interests you about it, not as an individual experience, but as a universal social phenomenon? How did you discover this topic?

– I feel a lingering sense of fear both in Lithuania and in Germany, where I currently live. Watching disturbing new mass political movements emerge has prompted a desire to understand what drives them, what drives people to change their political views, when entire regions that have historically voted for parties of the center or the left start voting for the right. I see fear as a circulating feeling. It’s hard to tell who’s afraid of what – rather, everyone’s afraid of everyone. Such pervasive fear leads to a huge lack of dialogue.

I started to be interested in emotions as a collective phenomenon – it is precisely in the collective that they are very strong. And one of the strongest of them is, of course, fear. She is able to move the political community. The word “emotion” comes from the Latin word receiver – to move, so it already has a relationship with something physical encoded in it. This led to a desire to understand the relationship of fear with movement, body and voice.

– Baroque and the images that come from it are important in your work. Why do you choose to look back at this period, what elements of it are important in conveying your idea?

– I became interested in baroque paintings while considering how to bring emotions back to the moving body. I come from a postmodern dance tradition that is very minimalistic, movement is abstract, and now I’ve decided to return to making sense of movement through feeling and imagination. I turned to the Baroque as an inspiration, because the bodies in the paintings of that period are grotesque, at the same time very human and completely inhuman, because we are no longer used to looking at people in an exaggerated emotional state. This is the drama that characterizes the feeling of fear in public space.

Personal archive photo/Chiaroscuro team

An emotional, frightened body creates fear by itself. I think we live in a politically dramatic time where a lot of things are painted in black and white. Baroque drama, chiaroscuro – light and darkness – gave me a lot of inspiration on how to talk about emotions through movement and not go into exaggerated theatricality.

In addition, the archetypes of the aggressor, the victim and the savior are very interestingly depicted in baroque paintings, which are used in populist discourse about society. In many Baroque works we can see the attacker, the radical victim – the baby, the sick person who cannot stand – and the one who tries to protect the victim. These archetypes reinforce the dramatic, conflictual relationship that is especially relevant in our day.

– You say that the key to this piece is the nuance between fear and discomfort. How do you experience this difference in your work and life?

– This aspect to the work comes from the book “Conflict Is Not Abuse” by the American writer Sarah Schulman, which is significant for my work. One of her key ideas is that we are often quick to call conflict violence, and in this way we quickly enter the position of the victim, not allowing the conflict to happen and not gaining insights from it. This is especially evident in political relations. It is important to see when a difference of opinion becomes a real source of danger, and when it is simply a conflict in which we should come together, hear the other, present our arguments, and finally understand how we can move forward.

The nuance between discomfort and fear is crucial here, because coming into conflict with opinions and values ​​different from ours makes us feel uncomfortable. It is most comfortable to live when everyone around us thinks and behaves in a way that seems right and normal to us.

Meanwhile, contact with people who think differently than us can create a feeling of discomfort. In the relationship between generations, different cultures and attitudes, it seems important to embrace this feeling as a fairly normal part of life in a pluralistic, free society and not equate it with insecurity. Just because people live or think differently does not make them dangerous to us.

– Sometimes criticism is heard in Lithuania that contemporary stage art works focusing on social or political messages sacrifice craftsmanship, technique, and conceptuality due to their relevance or effectiveness. What is your position on this matter? How do you balance keeping the harmony between the idea and the strength of its execution?

– My works do not start with a political message – with the help of the creative process, I seek to understand something more deeply. For example, I use the word “fear” a lot, but do I really understand the concept? There are many theories and perspectives that offer their own access. I want to enter into an intimate relationship with a phenomenon that I feel I know, but not deeply enough. With this piece, I am not trying to show that right-wing populism is bad, and that all those people are obsessed with fear. On the contrary, I want to try to understand the fear, because I see that we all feel it these days, just for different things.

Photo by Nadia Marilena Roccato/Residence Dansatelier

I don’t think that works with a clear political message are problematic in themselves – the bigger problem is works that do so in a very superficial way. Then many problems are repeated, which are tried to be criticized right here. Of course, the market dictates trends – now creators are expected to talk about topics that are personally experienced and close to them. Because of this, sometimes developers lack distance – it seems that if we are going through something, we know everything about it.

The topic of fear is also very close and personal to me: I am a woman, which is why I constantly experience fear in public spaces, I am a representative of a national minority, a three-time migrant. This feeling is part of my personal history, but I do not resist it in my work. I’m more interested in understanding what structurally connects different experiences of fear.

– In your opinion, is all art or should it be political? Could it not be so – and why?

– It seems to me that art is always political, but it is not always about politics. This nuance is very important. The works are sometimes about politics, but here they are completely non-political in terms of how they are created, what kind of relationship they form with the viewer, how much they give him, what they share. Politics for me is primarily about how we want to be with others.

– In “Chiaroscuro” an important place is occupied by your own texts. How do they function in your dance works?

– Form is important to me in the text, because I imagine it as a choreography. I always use my original texts, which resemble poetry, have repetitions and rhythm. In my performances, the text has its own body, which accordingly has its own movement, rhythm and space. In “Chiaroscuro” I use the form of dialogue – it came from thinking about the lack of this very thing in society. We prefer to tell each other what the other should think or do. That’s why I use the imperative mood in my texts, like orders.

Thus, the text in my works is not pragmatic, but poetic and usually works to open up the viewer’s imagination. For example, in Chiaroscuro, the main image is a mouth. It is a very interesting part of the body: first of all, it is political because we speak through it, secondly, it is very intimate, and finally, it acts as a kind of boundary or border, because it exists both outside and inside the body.

– The “Chiaroscuro” team consists of five Lithuanian and foreign dance performers. How do you choose who to work with and what does your creative process look like?

– I am working on this piece with Gabriele Bagdonaite and Dominyka Markevičiūta, young dancers who graduated from the Lithuanian Academy of Music and Theater last year with a bachelor’s degree in dance. At that time, I created a small piece for their course final project – Gabriele with Dominyka was a part of it. The work created at the Academy was also based on movement practices inspired by the Baroque, so I feel it makes a lot of sense to develop those ideas further with these dancers.

Amanda Barrio Charmelo from Peru, who lives in Brussels, and Sidney Barnes from Great Britain were my classmates at the PARTS Academy – we have worked together a lot both on other creators’ plays and on my own. The fifth performer, Lina Puodižukaitė, was once my modern dance teacher, she is a wonderful performer whom I remember as a dancer of the dance theater “AURA”. I’ve never worked with her before, so this is an amazing opportunity.

It was important to me that the artists represented different generations. Gabriele and Dominyka are young dancers, Amanda and Sidney are my peers in their thirties, and Lina belongs to a slightly older generation. In this way, each performer brings a very different experience, a different relationship to the subject. As a choreographer, I want different people to feel a sense of community and learn new skills during this process. I am not so much interested in emphasizing the personality of everyone, but rather in noticing how we can enter a common space of thinking and movement.

– You spent many years abroad, now you live between Lithuania and Germany. Are the topics of interest to the dance community correlated in these countries, or do you notice separations, certain uniquenesses?

– The German art context is currently going through a rather strange phase, which many experience as a kind of political censorship. I think we don’t have this phenomenon in Lithuania – that’s great. In general, different working conditions correspondingly create a different work culture. There are definitely less burnout people out there!

There are very interesting things going on in the Lithuanian dance field, wonderful initiatives, I feel a lot of support and solidarity here. There is more dialogue between different generations, I think society is healing from trauma and things will only get better with time.