Triangle of sadness: passage into a new life( The research was done during my creative residency in Georgia 'Dancing Together, Again' in may-june 2023)

 

 

 

 Triangle of Sadness - Passage into a new life (or how performative art can be the important wheel in transforming the world, at least someone’s inner world)


    ….always two kind of lives co-exist…

One is spectacular, hidden in our heads, made for enjoyment and everything seems perfect. A Plato’s cave - hidden, contrasting reality, irresistible, articulated in our minds. The other, our real life - unpredictable, furious, sad, rough, dangerous, saint requires re-capitulating position in our lives.
Perhaps in life it is always goes this way: a bit of drama, something touches you from inside, something affects from outside, a bit of sparks of neon ignite up through the body and mind and this becomes the history of the moment.

Once upon a time during my precious movement/artistic residency in Tbilisi, Georgia I have met queer, drag and transperson. That was a pure gender exploration during those days, and I found all that under one beautiful Caucasian hut Tbilisi in spaces where those people are dragged into their own think pink and glitter world. That was a real poetry and literature of embodied characters. I will name my dear friends and adorable people as Georgi, Lukrezia and Khaira. I had a chance to witness their life storytelling through their eyes, through the Movement theatre and entertainment, some vogueing hand gestures, pink glitters and the exhibition spaces. That space was space inside them and they were comfortable only in that space. They considered them as a very lucky person, as being queer, drag, or transperson is not something you live when you decide to go our for a few hours or trying to experience your imagination. This becomes a real triangle of sadness, inner horror but also the moment where one is indicating by each day a victory of they own trauma’s destructive effects on self and society by witnessing choice, decision and shape of how you want to be accepted outward. That I would call a real practicing of freedom on a daily basis, and only that ones who decides to be who they really are and what truthfully feels from inside can go through passage into a new life.
The area between the eyebrows and the very top of the nose bridge were something similar to all three of them. Observing wrinkles, insecure smile at the end of the corner of the lips, blurry look, strong necks, fragile hands and coloured nails, bowing the head, crossing the legs and feeling their shyness in the atmosphere. I am also observing the traces of the smoke of the cigarettes and few glitter on the shoulders. Shy again. Smiling and looking with the amount of uncertainty and vulnerability.
Crossing the leg, slightly turning the shoulder, re-connecting.
We are starting an interview somewhere in the theatre, somewhere in the club, somewhere on the stage where they can feel free and deal with their expressing.
 An interpersonal communication.
I am trying to be more attentive on uncomfortable truths about them, their experience, relational connections with the judgemental society. This I am linking with the question of performativity, of surviving, of accepting.
Accepting oneself as we are is both the most brave and difficult experience. Going through daily pain, judgement, hiding, unhappiness, depression, people’s eye on the skin (which comes from family, society, institution,…) made that so organic people into brave and colourful transformed butterflies.
To be a performer, entertainer, dancing on stage, playing music is the most private and very important space to them, where all expectations, desire, sorrow being partially transformed and where they are projecting inner kingdom, vector of their bio history and imaginary building of their relationships to the world.
The light, the costumes, the design, the nail polish, the lipstick, the glitters - all changes perspective in one night. Becoming a completely different body-souls on the stage. They are ruling the world around that intimate space.
That world admires them and look at them as queens.
Breathing with them.
Communicating.
Creating curiosity, madness and joy.
Still, that space is not space for everyBODY, only for lions, those who has a power to open the full potential for action and new changes. Image space somewhere lives on the real space ands the unseen parts of image space conflicts with parts of the space of actual experience.
Living own life through the performance and performative art in this world has special meaning. Drawing well known dance-scholar, choreographer, movement philosopher Sondra Freleigh, being seen is an essential phenomenon of performance, and means being understood, appreciated and objectified. People have opportunities to see and been seen through emphatic connection, and this connection can be activated in theatre, performative arts, in those spaces undertaken with mutual respect for performers and audiences who assemble to understand more about who they are and can transform.
Communicating oneself through performance or exhibited spaces/places means being able to respond, receive, playing with gravity and judgemental society, being able to show all your skin and skills, and vulnerability. Yes, performative art has that power - to heal, to make one valuable, human. Through performance we re-awaken our senses and renew our strength and power. Their performance allow their wounds to be seen. In seeing them, we see and learn how to care and those who perform in a circle of care are fortunate. Being seen is an experience consciously initiated in performance and we are focus more on the one who is seen, on the performer in analogous space of real life.
After the performance suddenly all sparkle, all energy, all vibrations, all eyes on performers are gone.
Everything comes back to the world above mentioned, less spectacular one, more serious, more sad, more real, more dangerous, more saint, more cautions, but more conscious too.
My three new friends will try to live another day of memory, expectation and pure fantasy melted with melancholy, isolation, the blues,…
….and try not to lose 3H - hope, happiness and (life) humour.
Being diverse means being open to many differences in lives.
Being open to colours.
To senses.
To others.
Being Georgy, Lukrezia and Khaira means trying each day from the beginning and not to enter into the space of conflict and misunderstanding.
The performative is a main domain in which discourse acts as power - as a way of thinking, behaving, speaking, re-valuing, interacting in the world. This acts becoming repetitive, all-consuming, circular just to speak our and speak up about their identities across a spectrum of articulation and create a chaotic nuisance that distracts the state of being normal.
Still, if drag (queer) is performative that does not mean that all performativity should be understood like that. There is an issue of unacknowledged loss - the self one is, who cannot be; the self of wants to be, but who is another.
That journey we can call a travel to hell to get there, to create a transformative possibilities and get that so wanted affirmation,
so wanted visibility,
being seen,
and accepted.
s.s.