Review: The Last Beauty of the Day
DANCERS RUNNING BACKWARDS
A dance performance invites you to play with thoughts
The screening of The Last Beauty of the Day at Studio Elsa has not even started yet, when the audience is slapped with the end credits and thanks in the familiar style of the movies.
In the next moment, the Finnish-Lithuanian couple Maria Saivosalmi and Andrius Katinas sit boredly in their chairs, on different sides of the stage. What led them to this? How did their day go? Was it beautiful after all, or was it their last, and therefore beautiful? The funny word order of the title of the work invites you to play with thoughts.
The story begins to build in his head when Saivosalmi and Katinas start working on their work in reverse chronological order. The reversal can also be seen in the movement: the dancers performing the same solo at the same time run backwards on stage. The viewers are also informed by a text projected on the background screen that the first scene is the beginning, which was supposed to be the end.
In their endearing and exhilarating monologues, the dancers open up to the audience and tell what went wrong in the performances. The reason turns out to be that so many of the superstition-based stunts were not performed before the performance. It doesn’t help anymore, no matter how much you give the other person a stroke of luck when the faucet of the sink was closed with the wrong hand. Or something like that.
Saivosalmi performs a beautiful love song, which Katinas dances with her back to the audience. At this point at the latest, the performers have charmed their audience with their versatile skills and calmness. After all, they are at home on stage! Also when performing warm-up and stretching movements to the rhythm of Brigitte Bardot’s sensual singing.
The radiation and presence of Saivosalmi are particularly impressive. The dancer only has to stand on the stage when the gaze is fixed on him. And what could be more difficult than just being on stage.
Insightful is the question embedded in the performance and focused on performers and dancers: have you ever seen yourself from the outside? As if to confirm what it feels like, the video camera turns towards the audience, and the viewers are forced to bask in the backdrop. Katinas jumps into the audience and settles into a game where some are watching, some are the object of the gaze.
And all the questions that even a dancer has to answer! At the latest when you have to recite an answer about the meaning of life, you may feel like an outsider. Especially if you read your own thoughts on the page of a women’s magazine, for example. Is that me?
And when everything, the entire artistic process, can be questioned. Saivosalmi interprets this confusion perfectly.
The Last Beauty of the Day is deliciously associated with many directions and is guaranteed to raise all kinds of questions in each viewer. The work ends in the pale bright lighting created by Jukka Huitila in the overdramatic atmosphere of a suspense film, which is reinforced by the symphonic music.
The solos danced separately by Saivosalmi and Katinas have power, passion and sensitivity. At the end, they smoke, and as if by stealth, the performance is over.