FREEFALL
Marion Darova
FALLING OR FLYING?
We stand on the edge, watching the infinity below us. It is inviting us to fall or to fly. The fear of the abyss has a special power, the horror seduces us. No, this is not a perverted fantasy, but the reality of each step before our feet meet the solid ground that reflects the emotion of the body. How much pleasure can we bear?
FREEFALL is a journey to the unnamed, in a territory unmarked by the binary of thought. As with the Möbius strip, we will take a closer look and find that the two sides are just different appearances of the same thing. There we will find the body that speaks to us, the body stripped of its social sign and gender, we will discover the human. We will replace the question “who am I” with the question “how am I”.
Androgynous beings and mythological images appear and set codes in the play of socio-cultural signs. The masculine and the feminine are only positions that language affirms, but also that exist only there. Beyond them are the relations between self and other, self and world, and their complex mirroring correspondence, in which we experience an inexhaustible drive to solve the equation. A longing that is unsatisfiable. Mythologies as a fund of the unconscious, a superreality in which the monster is not the other, but myself, represented through the image of the other. It frightens us as well as seduces us.
The dancers move around a stylized iceberg, a phallic symbol of the immaterial nature of our primordial Absence. The understanding that it is external is deceptive. There is no internal and no external, only the body that experiences. The inability to climb this object creates an echo of movements in bodies – they revel through their suffering, forming a choreography of repetition in the idea of eternal return. This is how enjoyment emerges – the inexhaustible pleasure before the unattainable. We desire, therefore we exist, for we are never where our thought is, but always with our desires as the condition of existence.
Concept and choreography: Marion Darova
With: Isabel Mitkova Martina Apostolova, Nikolay Markov, Plamen Kanev, Tsveta Doycheva, Yanitsa Atanasova
Sound and music: Kliment Ditchev
Visual environment: Vikenti Komitski
Costume design: Raya Karpacheva – Urban Nomad
Mapping – Ivelina Ivanova
Photography: Mihail Novakov
Co-production: ONE DANCE WEEK, TOPLOCENTRALA Regional Center for Contemporary Arts and Lachezar Tsotsorkov Fondation
Marion Darova graduated in Philosophy at Sofia University “St. Kliment Ohridski ”. From 2008 to 2011 сhe studied “Directing for Drama Theater” at the National Academy of Theater and Film Arts “Krastyo Sarafov”. In 2015 сhe completed a one-year training program in contemporary dance Derida Port Derida. Marion is a performer in the performances “Silent Weapon” (nominated for ICAR for Contemporary Dance and Performance 2015), “Zen Play”, “Sinner” (ICAR for Contemporary Dance and Performance in 2017), “Miss Julie” – choreographer Zhivko Zhelyazkov at Derida company. She made her choreographic debut in 2016 with “Mainstream”, which was selected for the festivals “Water” and “Antistatic” in 2017 and 2018. In 2017 she participated in the Bulgarian showcase of the European Festival of Contemporary Dance and Performance Airwaves with the show “Trauma”. 2018 is the premiere of “Corpus meum”, which aims to provoke a debate on the legalization of euthanasia. The dance performance was chosen to participate in the Bulgarian platform of “Antistatic” 2020. Her performance “Hating machine” explores the genealogy of hatred and its formation in the ideology of groups – it takes part in the “ACT Festival” in 2019. Participates as a performer in biotope performance of the Dutch company United Cowboys for the opening of the ACT Festival 2019. In the spring of 2020 she participated in a joint exhibition of the Bulgarian Women’s Fund with the installation “Spill” based on the film “Person” by Ingmar Bergman . In November 2020, she premiered “WO MAN” – a project in which she partners with Martina Apostolova. As a choreographer in theater projects she worked with Ivan Dobchev in 2018 for his play “New Bible” and with Malin Krastev and his class at the Lyuben Groys Theater College, where she teaches, for his play “Noise and Fury” (2020 ).
