DIRECTOR’S PROGRAMME NOTE
VINCENT DANCE THEATRE/DADA VON BZDÜLÖW THEATRE
Drop Dead Gorgeous takes place in a precarious, harsh and shifting landscape of dust and stones. Made in Poland and England over the summer of 2001, we were busy staging our own multiple deaths when time froze for a day, and the dramatic events in America overtook our imaginations. 11.09.2001. The day the earth stood still.
Our exploration of ‘the demolition of a man’, (as described by Primo Levi in If This Is A Man), researched within our creative process and placed historically in time, seemed suddenly overshadowed by events. Overwhelmed by a new reality of war and death, with our subject matter brought up to date with terrifying poignancy, we shared a moment in time that we would never be able to forget. Our efforts to comment on the subject seemed puny, dangerous, tasteless, even.
Where to draw the line? How to have something to say that isn’t overstated, sentimental or melodramatic, but which stays truthful to our thoughts, feelings and personal experiences? How to allude to the death and destruction we live with, without recreating images that should never be resurrected? In Greek tragedy, the worst moments are always unseen, off stage (‘obscene’). So, what to show? What to hide behind the wall? As our ability to play in the current climate became more loaded, so the act of performance becomes more hazardous - physically risky and emotionally confusing. How to translate the information? How to maintain humour and find something to believe in, in this fragmented and mind-blowing moment in history?
Drop Dead Gorgeous was half formed when the planes flew over New York. But now, as we step outside the studio and into the ‘real’ world with our work, there is a wild wind blowing through this city.
Charlotte Vincent 2001
