Performance by Maria Kalesnikava within the Berlin Radialsystem | EUROtoday

Stage fog fills the spacious live performance corridor in Berlin’s Radialsystem, the place guests sit tightly packed on the ground. Then it will get darkish, so you may absolutely consider the light sounds of the bass flute performed by Maria Kalesnikava. As one of the outstanding opponents of Belarusian dictator Alexander Lukashenko, the flautist was launched in December final 12 months after greater than 5 years of political imprisonment and is now returning to her roots – to classical and new music, which she studied in Minsk and Stuttgart.

In the premiere of her virtually hour-long efficiency entitled #freemaria on Thursday night, she combines the political battle for freedom and love for tradition. Last however not least, this helped her survive captivity. “The seventh ninth twenty-twenty. The day I lost my freedom. Or not?” With these phrases she begins her spectacular monologue, which she confidently delivers in German, her wrists wrapped in a thick metallic chain. Four cones of sunshine coming from above kind a field about two by three meters massive on the parquet ground, which represents the musician’s former jail cell.

Kalesnikava wears black clothes and her signature quick platinum blonde coiffure. Only her purple lipstick, one other trademark, is lacking this night. Of course, that was forbidden within the jail. Her physique was locked up. “But not my thoughts. Not my soul. Not my music.” Actually, she was by no means there within the cell as a result of she constructed her personal universe, says Kalesnikava. In the top, love is stronger than worry.

Director Jochen Sandig developed the idea for the efficiency for Kalesnikava, produced by the Berlin dance ensemble Sasha Waltz & Guests. It revolves across the relationship between inside and outer freedom – how one manages to take care of one’s will to dwell regardless of imprisonment. The former political prisoner demonstratively removes the chain from her wrists and throws it to the bottom. At factors like this the efficiency virtually appears too hanging. Kalesnikava’s sturdy, clear phrases may need been sufficient right here.

The artist will play three very completely different items over the course of the night: the third motion from Johann Sebastian Bach’s Partita in A minor for flute (BWV 1013), a composition personally devoted to her by the lately deceased Belarusian composer Viktor Copytsko and an experimental improvisation with whistling sounds harking back to respiratory noises. From a black cuboid positioned within the projected cell, she not solely takes out her instrument, but additionally a big stack of books. The latter had been her escape, she says, they enabled her to return to herself in captivity – not by hopes of a contented ending, however by her readability and the perception that purpose would prevail in the long run.

She reads from “… still say yes to life” by the Austrian psychiatrist Viktor Frankl, who offers together with his experiences in focus camps. Solzhenitsyn, Mandela, Confucius, Fromm, Orwell, Spinoza – she learn over 700 books throughout her imprisonment and even wrote two, though she was unable to take them together with her when she was launched, says Kalesnikava. That’s why she’s now determined to publish 4 without delay.

In addition, drawing and the numerous letters with expressions of solidarity helped her, as did singing and dancing to radio songs by Sting, Adele and the Rolling Stones, which she was typically capable of obtain on the radio whereas in jail. And the humor that even the guards would typically present, for instance once they joked that Kalesnikava’s jail uniform was flawed as a result of she was lacking purple lipstick.

At the top, the viewers rises from the ground, claps for minutes and pays respect to the agitator for inside freedom, who in the meantime varieties a coronary heart image together with her palms – one other of her logos. Kalesnikava confirmed energy that night, an infectious love of life and the braveness to face up in opposition to the totalitarian tendencies which are spreading on this world. But maybe her message would have been much more infectious with out the overly clear performative staging, simply together with her music and her phrases.