Director
Evgeny Kozlov
Dance
Alexander Bondarev Albert Albert /Shinichi Momo-Koga
Evgeny Kozlov Alexandra Konnikova Julia Tokareva
Irina Kozlova
Music
Kimmo Pohjonen
Video
Company editing
Technical Director
Tanya Williams
The moment of the
crash…You fell you’re suddenly floating in the air. And at that moment, you
see your mother’s face. She’s not smiling or crying. It’s her usual face. ( Notes from a suicide manual)
The performance ‘Bird’s eYe View’ was created by DoTheatre company in collaboration with the Baltic Theatre-Festival- St.Petersburg/ Russia- with the support of the Committee of Culture, City of St.Petersburg. The piece had premiered on 4th and 5th December 2002 on the main stage of Theatre-Festival Baltic House.
The main subject of the piece- flying in dreams and reality. The word ‘flying’’ is used polysemantically. The combination of dance and actions on stage suggests many interpretations of the conception. The gallery of images is variety: from bird-man and Icarus to kamikaze pilots.
Thoughts about flying
In our childhood many of us
dreamed about flying freely in the air or piloting a plane. At that time I
didn’t see much difference between those two options.
Growing up
I noticed that people used to describe others as ‘Not walking on the Earth’
or ‘Having ONE’S HEAD IN THE CLOUDS’.
Later I
discovered that in Antiquity people worshipped the ability to fly, and
someone had even burnt himself, rising up to the sun. His name was Icarus.
Much later
I learned about a special caste of pilots from the land of the Rising Sun.
They folded up their wings for the last flight. The diary of those pilots
had a name- The Chronicle of Diving Wind. And I asked myself- what must be
the difference between one who had burnt up in the desire to reach the sun
and one who exploded, crashing from the air down to the Earth.
Ones in our
travels we visited an odd place. It was the desolate pier in Brighton, with
no sign of human presence since at least the Second World War. Closed to the
public this derelict place was taken over by a colony of thousands of birds.
Every step in this half- ruined building was covered with layers of bird
shit, with down floating lightly above- we had the sense of entering an
absolutely unfamiliar existence. I felt like the first cosmonaut landing on
the surface of the moon.
In the end
I had learned about gravity, but didn’t yet know- HOW TO GET RID OF IT-
except in a dream or in death.
Press extracts
"In Do’s work, flight and the
fear of flying come to subconscious level, without the mediation of logic or
narrative. What is left is an experience of technically accomplished theatre
that manages to sidestep the conscious mind as lightly as a dream, and
leaving the imprint of singular vision."
Charles Donelan THE INDEPENDENT (Santa-Barbara, USA)
…a
fantastic- surreal nightmare of flying with its energy- laden images the
hits the mark…radical yet entertaining…memorable black humor based on
razor-sharp observation.
SUDDEUTSCHE ZEITUNG 25.02.03
…astoundingly vivid scenes in a sea of feathers. We see the dancing lights
of the angels of Death- the perverse beauty of floating, flying bodies,
powerful and elegant in one.
AACHENER ZEITUNG 24.02.03
