Creator: Maria Plotnikova
Performers: Bogdan Moroz – Rost Vyshnevyi – Slavik Fokin – Anna Kostyuk – Angelika Gonchar – Maria Ralemskaya – Anna Kadkalo – Svetlana Grebenyuk – Aleksandra Serova – Anastasiya Rogatyuk – Elena Burkovskaya – Sasha Onatsky – Kristina Melnik – Togzhan Slyamgaliyeva – Alyona Mamay – Maria Lanko – Natasha Chichasova
Photographs: Sergey Mishakin, Mystetsky Arsenal
Video: Anastasia Plotnikova
Performers are connected with the wooden sticks, which are held between their bodies using pressure and balance. When they start moving, the sticks start falling gradually. The performance continues until people loose all of the sticks. All the movements are choreographed by natural body behaviour with one instruction: try not to loose the sticks for as long as you can. The viewers are invited to enter this piece through empathy to the performers.
This is an allegory to all kinds of connection between humans in any groups, starting from couples and mirrored in whole nations. In order to make this a fragile and temporary connection, one should sacrifice himself for the good of the whole group. When performers are relieved one by one, at first, the audience is struck with a sense of sympathy, however, the layer of liberation is unravelled when the whole group falls apart.
