Review: Apospasmata

The wind over destruction


Andonis Foniadakis’ dance piece Apospasmata at the Helsinki City Theatre is an amazing experience, not least because it hides the dancers’ faces almost completely. No one can be identified. The dancers become part of a crowd that dances with hidden faces and wigs in the terrifying world of the stage. Men and women are not distinguishable from each other.

The world of the stage is largely created by obscurity and Julien Tarride’s soundscape, where the wheels of an invisible machine rumble and rattle, sirens cut through the darkness and lights flicker in the background of the “street chasm”. The dancers sometimes approach each other like insects crawling out of traps, sometimes aggressive, energetic and audacious. The movements create images of loneliness, threat and power, but also of recklessness – at least in my head.

Is our world just like this: tearing people apart and stripping them of all privacy? In the performance, there is also real undressing and undressing, but that is beside the point. If someone wants to see only naked dancers on a dimly lit stage, don’t bother. The power of the experience given by Apospasmata lies elsewhere.

In the end, a man and a woman meet two, and it’s not easy. The viewer feels anxiety, a lack of trust and a longing for closeness on their skin. Neither of them has protection from themselves or the other. At last, however, the hand reaches out to a simple gesture: Come! To the new world or to the destruction of the old one?

The red color of the carpet has colored the sweaty dancers; The woman looks at her “bloody” hands for a long time. A techno wind circulates over the darkness and destruction. Did the old end or did I see the birth of the new world? In an hour, you can sometimes get astonishingly far.