OSSIP
performed by Monique Romeiko and Bob Schweitzer at Tangente, Montreal
October 30, 31, November 1 @ 19h30, November 2 @ 16h tickets: 514 525 1500
OSSIP
takes a poem by Russian poet Ossip Mandelstam as a departure point.
Mandelstam wrote in the 1920’s and 30’s. After many years
of internal exile he died in a transit camp on the way to
detention in Siberia in 1937 (after having written an insulting poem
about Stalin, which he read to a group of friends and coleagues).
Alongside fellow ‘Acmeist’ poet Anna Akmatova he conceived of a poetry
that was both a song to the detail of everyday life and a witness to
social and political conditions. The poem “You and I...” heard at first
in fragments and then whole in “Ossip” is simutaneously a story of the
passage into exile and enforced silence and a metaphor for death -- an
honouring of the comfort of the company of others and the inevitability of
departure.
The stage is occupied by several unusual chairs.
One with an extra back, others linked into pairs. We hear fragments of
Mandelstam’s poem in russian, english and french. Performers move from
one chair to another. Then the stage in still, leaving the voice and
the chairs. The two performers move into a distorted social dance, as
the poem becomes whole for our ears. The focus of “Ossip” is shared
equally between the dancers, the chairs on stage, and the words coming
to our ears, each alternately building a sense of a whole. In its
articulation of a voice who speaks and a listener who is both audience
and intimate.
OSSIP is a work in progress developed this
fall during a 2-week residency with Monique Romeiko and Robert
Schweitzer at Overtigo-Centre de création.
BIOGRAPHY
Andrew
Forster is a visual artist whose work includes performance, video and
installation. His work includes a production of Samuel Beckett's "That
Time" (with Michael Fernandes), the performance "En masse" - a movement
project for 75 people (with choreographer Suzanne Miller) at
Tangente, Montreal(2003), “Cinéma” - an outdoor performance for an
audience seated indoors at the Société des arts technologiques,
Montréal (2004) and “Duet” a performance-video installation in which
two performers echo the movements of a suicide bomber, shown this
past September at Galerie B-312, Montreal. In 2003 he established
the company Push-Montréal in order to extend collaborative and
cross-disciplinary processes.
info: www.reluctant.ca/portfolio
Tangente Danse
You and I will sit for a while in the kitchen,
the good smell of kerosene,
sharp knife, big round loaf -
Pump up the stove all the way.
And have some string handy
for the basket, before daylight,
to take to the station,
where no one can come after us.
(Ossip Mandelstam - 1931)
ss
s
On s'assoira, toi et moi, un moment dans la cuisine,
la bonne odeur du kérosène,
le couteau affûté, la grosse miche ronde-
Pompe le poële à fond.
Et de la ficelle à porté de la main
pour le panier, avant le lever du jour,
pour emporter à la gare
où personne ne pourra venir après nous.
(Ossip Mandelstam - 1931)
