cie. toula limnaios

»toula limnaios already dealt with dostoyevsky once before in 2005. at that time it was his story »a gentle creature« that provided the greek choreographer with material for her dance. now it is the russian novelist’s tormented characters in general, whose motives she has gone in search of. the setting is thus accordingly more or less empty; the only thing is a wet, brown coat that hangs surreally inhumane to the front right side of the stage, dripping into a vat. narrow, white strips of gauze on three sides of the room give the space a shimmering atmosphere. in the middle four motionless figures stand with heads in hoods. clebio oliveira comes rushing in from outside into the silence of die halle. a woman with a pistol is right on his heels. the piece is entitled “les possédés” and she is the first of the possessed,forcing the man over and over again to various actions. he is compelled to lift and carry her,to fall and stand up again, to kiss and hit her, to sing and to speak of himself. the brazilian dancer does all this in english and very personally, while the faceless ones gradually unveil themselves, pulling the cloth over their heads into their mouths like cows chewing cud. then the six dancers form a slow group, their gaze directed at the audience, a motif that will be returned to again and again, as if they seek to make us accomplices of their actions. … accompanied by streaks of noise over floating sounds, hironori sugata aims … the pistol at us. another pistol surfaces and together they harass a woman, who convulses, frees herself, grasps a pistol, but doesn’t know what to do with it and prefers to return to being the victim that the other two deranged figures are meant to threaten. the game of victim and perpetrator goes back and forth, a trance seems imminent, one of them grasps the pistol, creates a rhythm with the clicking of the, which torments the others from pose to pose like hanging marionettes. … clebio breaks out of the merry-go-round to go to mercedes and perform with her the evening’s strongest duet yet to a jumble of voices, an inventive with various lifts and traveling movements, risky jumps and grasps. what was originally (insinuated gesture), now becomes an …application of make-up. with white corpse-like faces and mechanical movement sequences, the group dances towards a collective outbreak of demonic possession. mercedes falls into a frenzy of biting and tearing, fingers point at her, as she insanely crashes down from the heights she is lifted to. she is placed head first into the murky black of the vat. clebio is caught and stripped naked. mercedes proceeds to maniacally whip black welts onto his body with her long wet hair. the st. vitus’s dance infects clebio: he is forced forwards by the others behind him in a row. on the floor, he twists himself into knots to the point of immobility. just one moment before he reaches the audience, the darkness swallows the ritual. that hurts; such a strong ending comes completely unexpected. it once again proves toula limnaios as a true mistress of visually stunning imagery….» (tanznetz und neues deutschland, volkmar draeger, 2009)

»toula limnaios and ralf r. ollertz have found an impressive way of transforming literature into movement and music. the uncanny and the romantic, creatures of the night and daydreams in aesthetic form. the success story of choreographer toula limnaios is based on her opulent dance theater images of great psychological depth.« (zitty)