Flavia Dalila D’Amico: In music In Levare is placing the accent on a weak note, that relieves us for a moment from a continuous beat. In Levare, however, is also to rebel, to rise up together. For your vocation and artistic research, do you find yourself more in the first or in the second definition? What does ‘In Levare’ refer you to?
Viliam Dočolomanský: I find myself in both conotations of “in levare”.
Any good music should have this kind of “hidden” syncopal accents, that are lightening up the whole phrase and make our perception vivid and awakened. The same is true of the movement or vocal phrasing, any expression that our performers and musicians do on stage.
Such is the work with contemporary topics. They have a global impact on our lives, but somehow, they are hidden from us. As we often can not see what is the most essencial. But once we find the courage to face it, we become more vivid and real. It gets us back to our basic and forgotten self.
This can be the gift of a vivid moment at the theatre, when a real experience is transmitted from performers to the audience. We don’t need to understand it, but once real action happens, we feel it, we are awaking.
FDD: In your work you often start from a real fact (Commander) or a current phenomenon (refugee). What is the method of transforming a document into a physical score and aesthetic process?
VD: It is a long-term and complex process that begins with empathy. My performers and collaborators are surrendering to real-life experiences of different people we are interviewing at the beginning of the research process of a specific topic. They take us through powerful, even extreme moments. We let it influence us, and we begin to re-evaluate the society and the world we live in. Thus letting it transform us from the inside, transforming us not only as artists but primarily as individuals. From that inner movement, outer physical score movement is born, as well as musical motives, vocal partiture, set design, everything. No one is just an interpreter hiding behind aesthetic forms. All are both researchers and creators, improvising and sharing what moved each of us. It is a kind of alchemy – the results always surprise me. This way does not let me get bored by my own results. Taking such a journey during the art creation is becoming more precious nowadays.
We are not trying to create anything popular, but rather getting to the essence of the topic, the reality, to ourselves, diving into the experience. As if it is the very last performance we are creating.