New media art - Imagine there’s a fish (0)

Tallinn University      Imagine there’s a fish   A dance performance by Sigrid Savi   
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
  Kärolin Liik  Crossmedia in Film And Television  BFM6143.FK New Media Art: Evolution and Applications  2019       


 
  Every person has a different picture in their mind when someone says the word                             “dance”. The imagination also depends a lot on the age of a person and the environment one                                   has lived in. Older people most probably think about folk dance, middle-aged people, who                             most probably are also more into culture, about ballet and younger people about showdance.                             It is unbelievable how wide the artform at hand actually is. If you dig into the world of dance                                       a bit deeper you can find a lot of unexpected art works under the name of this art outlet.  I am also used to thinking about dance as something that is mostly about moving your  body according to the rhythm of music. I have also seen plays of contemporary ballet but  when I went to see two contemporary dance recitals in 2017 which were premiered in  Sõltumatu Tantsu Lava, I did not expect to see what I saw. The one that left me the strongest  impression was a show called “Imagine there’s a fish” which was choreographed by Sigrid  Savi and also performed by her.  Sigrid has been mostly active as an freelance dancer. She graduated Viljandi Culture  Academy in 2015 on the field of dance. She has mostly now worked in Berlin. Her work  messes a lot with the canons, perspectives and stylistic understandings that people usually  have (New Baltic Dance, 2018).  Best term to describe “Imagine there’s a fish” is that it is a performance. For a person  who does not have any information it might even not seem like a dance play at all. There are  classical technical solutions used - music & lights, but actually most of the recital is built on  the speaking of the performer and on the items that are used on the stage. The “dance moves”  even rarely fit exactly into the music.  The world where the play is set is somewhat familiar yet nothing but, meaning it is  super abstract. Sigrid herself has described the world like that: “This is an expedition which  1 


drags itself to the safe unknown navigating on the autopilot.” (Sõltumatu Tantsu Lava, 2017).  The description is pretty accurate. The character kind of is in her own safe bubble, where she  feels safe but for an outsider, the world and how she behaves in it, seems bizarre. Yet you can  find yourself drawing parallels with your own life while experiencing the play.  There are not many props used on the stage and the ones that are there really  emphasize the abstractness of the world. There is an old flower stand from soviet times, an  empty fish bowl, a carpet which also seems to date back to soviet times, shoes, roller skates,  safety goggles and scissors. There are also flowers involved which have a little bit different  purpose than other items in the scene. The props are used as part of the story, mostly while  the dancer speaks. The world on the stage is really naive, which she believes to be also one of  the central ideas of her pieces ( ​New Baltic Dance, 2018)​.  The play consists of many unexpected moments. One of the colorful moments, which  is also a repeating pattern throughout the play, is where she naively does yoga-like movement  while speaking about following her feelings (Edwards, 2018). It also seems to be a good  connection between nowadays pop-culture influencers who do things just for the sake of  them being popular without actually paying further attention to the meaning of it. Another  unexpected turn of events is when she is being handed safety goggles and scissors and with  these she starts to cut up the carpet. At first she tries to do it really neatly until she finally just  starts ripping it. For the audience the anticipation is quite uncomfortable and awkward and  she plays on it magnifically. Not to mention the scene near the end where she starts basically  crawling on the back wall of the room.  At the end there is also an interesting audience interaction scene. All the members of  audience get a flower at the start of the play. There are no instructions what to do with the  flowers. Near the end she just kind of freezes into a pose inside of a spot of light, the music  2 


keeps playing and nothing happens. After sitting quietly for a few minutes, the audience, at  least the time when I saw the play, started throwing the flowers at her one by one. This is an  interesting phenomena when looking at it from the psychological side, no one does nothing  until there is someone to make a move. At first that someone is kind of an outsider. After few  people have already thrown their flower it is already peer pressure and something that “all  normal people do”. This also kind of describes the core idea of the performance as well -  things seem weird if only few people are doing them, but the shift from weird to normal can  sometimes be really subtle and unnoticable.  I believe that dance is a wonderful medium on which you can actually combine  almost every possible media outlet. “Imagine there’s a fish” is an excellent example of how  the boundaries of classical understanding of dance and dance recitals can be shifted easily  and successfully. It can be said that the play at hand shifts even more than just our boundaries  of dance, it also shifts our boundaries of how we perceive the world around us.     3 


References  “PREMIERE`17: „Imagine There´s A Fish.’”  ​Sõltumatu Tantsu Lava ​,  stl.ee/en/lavastus/premiere17-imagine-theres-fish/.  “Review: Estonia Now Triple Bill at the Tramway, Glasgow.”  ​Exeunt Magazine ​,  exeuntmagazine.com/reviews/review-estonia-now-tramway-glasgow/.  “Sigrid Savi (Estonia)│Baltic Dance Platform.”  ​New Baltic Dance ​,  www.newbalticdance.lt/en/naujasis-baltijos-sokis-19/sigrid-savi-estija/.    4