The New Current!
Don’t hate the media, become the media. Jello Biafra
CAMDEN Fringe Interview:
When did you start putting the show together?
We started considering this book of Georges Bataille as inspiration of our butoh performance about one year ago.
Tell me a little bit about I Dreamt of a Flower what can we expect?
Dirty represents freedom, without past and future and the folly of life. The performance will be a tribute to the freedom and to the folly. We started on the 2003 performing Something in between inspired to In praise of folly by Erasmus of Rotterdam, we continue performing the lightness of the folly with I dreamt of a flower.
How did the show come about?
The title of our performance comes from one poem of Georges Bataille Inside Blue of Noon. The poem says approximately: I dreamt of a flower that represents our love. A flower that as the love never dies.
What was it about Blue of Noon by Georges Bataille that inspired you both to create you show?
In reading Blue of Noon we considered that there were a lot of matter for our butoh performance. Dirty represents freedom and the folly of life. This book is “very butoh” in the meaning that every page of it is a tribute to the folly, crazy life. In Dirty I recognised Flavia Ghisalberti and her way to live. Exactly what butoh represents for us, the natural, spontaneous, crazy way to live. When I read the book I said to me: “this character is Flavia, Dirty and Flavia are very near, the same person”.
What has been the biggest challenges you’ve faced with this show?
It is a première so the biggest challenge is represented from this aspect. It is a subject very much related to our previous performances.
What was it about performing that interested you so much?
In Between Butoh was born as group on 2003 on the project Something In Between, project related to the psychiatry and to the aspects of life related to sensitivity that belongs to everybody. A sensitivity often frustrated.
What was the first show you saw that made you want to create theatre?
It was a theatre show inside a psychiatric hospital in Rome. It was amazing because there were 2 levels of reality and folly: one piece of theater that represented the folly inside a real psychiatric hospital, were the people really were forced, abused and where they really lost their freedom and many times their life.
4 words to describe your new show?
Unconventional, controversial, crazy, experimental.
What has been the best advice you’ve been given?
Our performances are not to understood: they are to be felt. And the public feels first of all with their senses and with their organs. Is this the revolutionary sense of our butoh performances. To put the public in front of themselves. To feel what they have hidden deeply in themselves.
Who has been your biggest inspiration?
Antonin Artaud as writer has been the biggest inspiration with “The Theater and its double”. Masaki Iwana, Tatsumi Hijikata and Kazuo Ohno as butoh dancers.
And finally, what do you hope people will take away from your show?
I hope that people will recognise themselves watching our performance and that they will take away a bit more of themselves.
Niger Asije