Dancing days are over
on October 7, 2008
in misc
We saw Wierszalin’s Bóg Niżyński on Sunday, a piece of passionate theatre that forcefully gripped the mind for the next 48 hours, perhaps much longer.
Dostoievsky’s words come to mind – “It is not by confining one’s neigbour that one is convinced of one’s sanity.”
What we saw on the stage was an asylum cell turned into the temple of a madman dissecting his own life. Watching him wildly dance his past and reach some near-shamanic trance, could have left few in the audience feeling complacent about their sanity. A few others, however, could have discovered to their horror that all reason they possess implies only a very questionable absence of madness in them.
Similarly, few of the spectators, occupying the darker part of the temple-stage, may have cringed at seeing Niżyński come to realize he was a Christ-like figure. For others, watching him lift his skinny fingers like antennas to Heaven could have meant recognizing a similar gesture of their own. The silence that followed the closing scene was for that gesture to sink into minds. Or, at least, for some in the audience to find out in wonder it is the point some of them reach after they have madly danced their life away. Just about the only thing they have ever done.
The question remains: how can we hammer out some sense out of our time and place? Is shaking the ass all life going to change a damn thing?
Francisco Goya
