JP review: '7734' Jasmin Vardimon Company, London 25th November 2011, Saddler's Wells, London

I was born near by Auschwitz 2 generations after the Holocaust. I’ve spent my childhood and teenage hood by listening to the stories of my grand parents about the concentration camp. I’ve visited several times the place of massive Nazis murderer. Each time when I was entering the gate of genocide I was experiencing very uncomfortable feeling of nausea. As soon as I accessed the auditorium of Sadler’s Wells on Thursday evening 26th November 2010 in London, the stage covered by pile of clothes recalled very sad memories from that time of my previous Holocaust’s visit. I could sense with each part of my body and my skin the history of Second World War. I could feel the desperation of Jews who were trapped into the concentration camp to pay the highest price by belonging to their culture, tradition and religion – their life. The contrast shown in ‘7734’ between a normal life (playful, pleasant, cheerful) and a cruel life from that period of 1939-1945 was in my opinion one of the main protagonists of the performance. Me as an audience could perceptively receive the audio and visual effects of dance performance by selected images put into perspective way. For instance the introduction by the conductor, who represents the highest consciousness of the artistic and spiritual world, the harmonic movement of limbs underneath the soft silky sheets was reflecting the beauty of human nature and the peaceful life in itself. Suddenly such an ordinary life becomes disturbed by strong Wagner’s opera tunes recalling the Second World War’s destructive and agonic time. Performers are coming out of the sheets and dipping into them again, appearing, disappearing, rolling, and falling. A dynamic and extremely expressive movement of dancers mirrors the frustration of concentration camp prisoners who are searching for hope of survival. The dramaturgy of arising classical music puts accents on sharp and sudden dynamic of movement. Contrasting soft and peaceful music emphasizes on smooth and playful dance. The drunk people scene is either ironically referred to easy nowadays life or to desperation of sudden death of Holocaust victims. By swapping the characters between the dancers from Nazis to prisoners and the other way around reinforces the performance’s image of the genocide. In extreme circumstances the human nature becomes very egoistic and overwhelmed by fear. People loose their dignity and are ready to sell their soul and became inhumane. I cannot blame them for that, as I don’t know myself how I would behave in certain circumstances. And I hope I will never experience it. The photographer taking the pictures of married couple is using the freedom of his own expression in terms of visual art. He doesn’t want to imitate any one else; he wants to sustain his own point of view and opinion. He is not interested in becoming anyone else, and he doesn’t care if he pictures the defects of human being. He frames only what is essential in his own creation and avoids what he is ‘supposed’ to expose. I think this also refers to the time where people got rid if their own identity in order to save their life.
To summarize I would like to divagate on something which hasn’t occurred to others considering various reviews I went through previously, that in ‘7734’ appeared a moment of liberation by soviets (Russians) after the Second World War - according to the history. The red flag in my opinion represented a symbol of communism, which dominated the Eastern Europe after the war and Poland was one of these countries under the Russians regime. The fake friendship offered by Soviets to Poles ended up by another massive murder of thousands Polish elite from political scene. This factor was only discovered recently by an accidently plane crash with 90 Polish politicians on board including the president Kaczynski. It happened in the same place after 40 years of Polish officers murder by Russians in Katyn (Russia).
The ‘Hell’ of 1939-1945 apparently affected the whole world society from different political, economical, psychological perspectives. Though it’s good to be reminded about the tragedy, which took place in the past to avoid another traumatic experience. Jasmin Vardimen coming back from Jewish background discovered the truth of Holocaust and based her new dance performance on subject which must have affected her personal life as much as it has my own and probably thousands and millions of others. During the performance’s duration I couldn’t take my eyes and mind of incredibly well reconstructed history leaded by movement and verbal expression. I don’t see why the cruel reality shouldn’t be exposed on stage as a dance theatre performance. I think that precise choreography, anticipated by previous research on the subject are the main tools to create a masterpiece of performing art. I believe Jasmin Vardimon succeeded in that. I could clearly read in between the movement lines the intention of choreographer’s reference to such a heavy subject as genocide.