Tanz im August: Interview with Meg Stuart
Channel: perypezye
Date: 2016-09-15

We interviewed Meg Stuart choreographer in the course of Tanz im August festival, where she was present with the solo "BLESSED". An apocalyptic scenario in a stage format, including funny appearances by a Brazilian carnival dancer: a sonny boy, clad in white and sandals, stalks through a cardboard paradise with a Swan Lake swan, South Seas palm tree and hut. But soon his paradise is left to decay. The catastrophe enters in the form of relentless rainfall that brings destruction instead of blessings. Time becomes the critical factor, and while Doris Dziersk’s stage design begins to collapse, the dancer and choreographer Francisco Camacho is subject to a transformation and confronted with the impossible task of building a shelter with soggy cardboard. Given the context of hurricane Katrina, Stuart’s piece shows a slow collapse with no escape routes – all the way to a slow-motion run through a destroyed wasteland. Stuart and Camacho had already worked together on Disfigure Study in 1991; in 2007, Stuart developed Blessed for him, embedded in a sound collage by Hahn Rowe. The piece was awarded the French Prize of Criticism in 2008.