Last week, more precisely on 26th November, at 19 pm, another interesting event took place at Vent Space gallery. This time the visiting artist was Denisa Štefanigová from Czech Republic. She is currently obtaining her master’s degree at arts in EKA now. The weather outside had just gotten chilly, you could tell it by the lack of smokers outside. People had gathered inside the cozy cellar gallery.
Štefanigová had invited people for one night, to share experiences of fabrics and dance The event was called “Lay Down on Me”. I must admit that the description of the event was beautiful and calling. It told about flowers and butterflies, of bodies and meetings, of energies and unbearable desire to kiss everybody. The text on Facebook was powerful enough to make people gather together, yet since nothing really happened in the first place, most of them left. I heard from visitors that they hoped for some sort of performance to begin. But who knows, maybe deep inside they wished to take part of ecstatic dance, what was promised in the event description.
Many fabrics were laid down on a gallery floor, in all sorts of materials, colors and sizes. In the main gallery room there was also a screen with hairy male legs and in a small intimate room there were another screen with two persons doing sth under the grey blanket. Blankets themselves are super nice topic, especially because the golden age of laying under the blanket has arrived. We all know the feeling, when arriving home, the blanket in the bed screams to you: “Lay down on me!”. Sadly, the fabrics in the gallery room weren’t that irresistible. Even though there were all sorts of my personal favorites, like chick yellow velvet or violet silk or black satin.
I really did give my very best to try and dance in them, and it all went well as long as my head was covered with a bunch of fabrics. As soon as I could see, what is going on around me, I lost the feeling or urge for dancing. In the first place, there were these white walls and full blast light, which caused a feeling of anxiety. There is a reason why they put lights on at nightclubs when they want to get rid of people. Secondly I got stuck in my movements when I realized that a big camera was pointing at me. When you want to make people feel free, don’t put a camera in their faces, it is scary.
In conclusion, I really appreciate the beautiful idea of people integrating trough dancing in the midst of comforting fabrics. These kinds of events have a huge potential to make people understand that it is possible to spend nice time together without words. Instead of talking we can connect to each other trough energies and movements. But to make people dance you need some preparations for it, some kind of easy exercise to start with. And most of all, nice cozy comfortable atmosphere and anonymous darkness.
Author: Aleksander Metsamärt