Dancing Tower, review
Turun Sanomat -review
Turun Sanomat, Kaisa Kurikka
On top of dreams - Dancing Tower is a visionary spectacle
Russian visionaire Sasha Pepelyaev’s Dancing Tower is fierce, rough, poetic, biblical, innovative, breathtaking, surprising, ambiguous, and beautiful. What it does not offer is clichés, pretty petty aesthetics, and it is not modest or tepid. Dancing Tower is a perpetual motion machine, and the developer of its concept, Sasha Pepelyaev is a machine-building inventor-genius whose scenes reach from far history towards the future. Looking at this perpetuum mobile one gets inspired by wonder and excitement, and falls for the creativity of the team.
Defining dancing Tower is not an easy task, for it feverishly combines modern dance with physical theatre as well as elements of contemporary circus and music concert. Dancing Tower is sound, movement, special effects, storytelling, shapes and materials; joined together these make a passionate whole.
The international team reaches high standards. Costume and lighting design, Ülo Krigul’s fantastic soundscapes, Pavel Pepeliaev’s unbelievable tower, all dancers and musicians work together impressively.
The piece is undeniably a major production starting from its physical size and amount of people involved, and continuing in the level of technical innovations and requirements. Calling Dancing Tower a spectacle is justified.
As Aurinkobaletti’s 30th anniversary celebration production Dancing Tower is more than suitable. The group’s previous collaborations with Pepelyaev have produced exceptional and innovative works. The first of which, The Upside-down Flyer (2001) is reminded of while watching Dancing Tower, for its scenery touches the same subjects.
As a building the tower is interesting. The different levels, numerous details, ropes and accessories are a pleasure to watch even as such. Another thing that makes watching this piece special is that you are looking upwards most of the time.
Rising towards the heights is a central issue. As a construction the tower naturally climbs up. In a more symbolical manner, it’s about the human urge for elevation - the need to see further, to create, to dream. From movement’s point of view, it comes across as vertical dance, where the floor is left behind. The dancers do dance on the levels of the stage, but also hanging from ropes and climbing the structures of the tower. It doesn’t seem though, that the human movement would be lost inside the mechanical constructions. It’s more about creating an image of a tower that dances itself.
Machine art and dada
Sasha Pepelyaev’s art continues avant-gardist and Dadaist traditions, placed in a post-industrialist context. Experimenting with new combinations has a central role. At the same time Dancing Tower is machine art and art of a machine. During the 90 min. performance the audience is presented with a cavalcade of strangest machines, inventions and apparatuses. A man gets dressed in a smoking suit, and Elina Raiskinmäki wears a bird structure that reminds of da Vinci.
The instruments of the live musicians are innovative as well. The shapes of traditional instruments can be seen as traces. The set and accessories would make an interesting sculpture exhibition as such.
Pepeliaev does not build general opposition between machine and human, but presents this relationship as symbiotic. The tower-machine becomes human and people become machine-like. The space, where the movement is created, lies between.
Story and symbols
Dancing Tower tells a story that has been printed on the program notes. The performance can be looked at as a continuum, but even without it there is plenty to think, to watch and to experience even without it.
The story deals with no less than the birth of elements of the universe (fire, water, air and earth). Artist and Beauty in their part have a child, Imagination, who invites Exploration and Experiment to join.
The tower dwellers probe their existence and celebrate the universe. The celebration ends in a destructive war filled with suffering, and this goes on until Artist finds a way to peace and harmony.
Pepelyaev’s imagery is strongly based on biblical stories, most evidently on the creation of the world, Babel tower and Jonah in the belly of a whale. Dancing Tower also reminds me of Terry Gilliams movies. Pepeliaev’s vision covers the universe, but above all it dreams forwards, further.
Turun Sanomat, Kaisa Kurikka
On top of dreams - Dancing Tower is a visionary spectacle
Russian visionaire Sasha Pepelyaev’s Dancing Tower is fierce, rough, poetic, biblical, innovative, breathtaking, surprising, ambiguous, and beautiful. What it does not offer is clichés, pretty petty aesthetics, and it is not modest or tepid. Dancing Tower is a perpetual motion machine, and the developer of its concept, Sasha Pepelyaev is a machine-building inventor-genius whose scenes reach from far history towards the future. Looking at this perpetuum mobile one gets inspired by wonder and excitement, and falls for the creativity of the team.
Defining dancing Tower is not an easy task, for it feverishly combines modern dance with physical theatre as well as elements of contemporary circus and music concert. Dancing Tower is sound, movement, special effects, storytelling, shapes and materials; joined together these make a passionate whole.
The international team reaches high standards. Costume and lighting design, Ülo Krigul’s fantastic soundscapes, Pavel Pepeliaev’s unbelievable tower, all dancers and musicians work together impressively.
The piece is undeniably a major production starting from its physical size and amount of people involved, and continuing in the level of technical innovations and requirements. Calling Dancing Tower a spectacle is justified.
As Aurinkobaletti’s 30th anniversary celebration production Dancing Tower is more than suitable. The group’s previous collaborations with Pepelyaev have produced exceptional and innovative works. The first of which, The Upside-down Flyer (2001) is reminded of while watching Dancing Tower, for its scenery touches the same subjects.
As a building the tower is interesting. The different levels, numerous details, ropes and accessories are a pleasure to watch even as such. Another thing that makes watching this piece special is that you are looking upwards most of the time.
Rising towards the heights is a central issue. As a construction the tower naturally climbs up. In a more symbolical manner, it’s about the human urge for elevation - the need to see further, to create, to dream. From movement’s point of view, it comes across as vertical dance, where the floor is left behind. The dancers do dance on the levels of the stage, but also hanging from ropes and climbing the structures of the tower. It doesn’t seem though, that the human movement would be lost inside the mechanical constructions. It’s more about creating an image of a tower that dances itself.
Machine art and dada
Sasha Pepelyaev’s art continues avant-gardist and Dadaist traditions, placed in a post-industrialist context. Experimenting with new combinations has a central role. At the same time Dancing Tower is machine art and art of a machine. During the 90 min. performance the audience is presented with a cavalcade of strangest machines, inventions and apparatuses. A man gets dressed in a smoking suit, and Elina Raiskinmäki wears a bird structure that reminds of da Vinci.
The instruments of the live musicians are innovative as well. The shapes of traditional instruments can be seen as traces. The set and accessories would make an interesting sculpture exhibition as such.
Pepeliaev does not build general opposition between machine and human, but presents this relationship as symbiotic. The tower-machine becomes human and people become machine-like. The space, where the movement is created, lies between.
Story and symbols
Dancing Tower tells a story that has been printed on the program notes. The performance can be looked at as a continuum, but even without it there is plenty to think, to watch and to experience even without it.
The story deals with no less than the birth of elements of the universe (fire, water, air and earth). Artist and Beauty in their part have a child, Imagination, who invites Exploration and Experiment to join.
The tower dwellers probe their existence and celebrate the universe. The celebration ends in a destructive war filled with suffering, and this goes on until Artist finds a way to peace and harmony.
Pepelyaev’s imagery is strongly based on biblical stories, most evidently on the creation of the world, Babel tower and Jonah in the belly of a whale. Dancing Tower also reminds me of Terry Gilliams movies. Pepeliaev’s vision covers the universe, but above all it dreams forwards, further.