“Autumn with Farm in the Cave” concludes this week at Dox

Tomorrow and on Wednesday (Oct. 9th and 10th), the modern dance and theatre group Farm in the Cave concludes their most recent series of projects “Autumn with Farm in the Cave” at the Dox Centre for Contemporary Art mainly utilizing non-conventional performance spaces for their performances.

“Refuge” is a journey created by Farm in the Cave, involving three people, whose paths intersect—and together they overcome a region of anxiety, courage, failure and compassion as they seek shelter in an indifferent world. This performance, which includes physical theatre and live music with seven musical and dance performers, was inspired by actual interviews with young refugees living in London. There is no language barrier for this performance.

In the same vein, this past weekend (Oct. 5th and 6th), “The Journey” by Farm in the Cave took place in two locations. The first was on the terrace of Dox Center for Contemporary Art, transformed into an empty, elevated parking lot in the city at night. The neighboring apartment buildings with curious onlookers from their balconies added to the mise-en-scene.

With children from the Disman Ensemble on the sidelines and a spellbinding soundscape by the horn-player Marcel Barta, two women and one man performed an agitated or exasperated lover’s triangle. Then a silver convertible pulled into the parking lot blasting techno music and with two older ladies sitting high and looking like they are headed to a party in their gaudy, glittery dresses and done-up hairdos; all hell seemed to break loose after this.

Later, inside Gulliver (Dox’s custom-made wooden blimp suspended in the air above the complex) the performers of Farm in the Cave including Hana Varadzinová, Eliška Vavříková, Róbert Nižník, Roman Horák, Anna Kršiaková, Jun Wan Kim, Minh Hieu Nguyen, and Vít Halška took turns in song and dance with live instrumentation for the rest of The Journey as the audience was taken on a trip across time relating personal histories and folk songs of the Old World from the era of 19th century Slavic Europeans immigration to America. These same photos and later video recordings with songs, rhythms and dance steps are a part of Farm in the Cave’s personal history, over its ten-year existence.

Farm in the Cave also reveal their sources by playing the actual video recordings of folk singers in the fields or hills, then the same song is reinterpreted on stage in the voice or voices of performers. It is an excursion in ethnomusicology and dance ritual in celebration across Europe, beyond Slavic culture to include Spain, then Latin America and Africa, and the Caribbean.

Towards the end of the performance, Marcel Barta returned for an exquisite solo on the alto saxophone, then there is a singular vocal piece in English with the lyrics (as wise words of advice), “To be happy… be only what you are. Don’t be anything, but what you are… That’s happiness.”

This performance of live and recorded music, modern dance and mostly folk songs in Czech & Slovak is for all ages, though it got a bit loud at times; it is also accessible to non-Czech and Slovak speakers.

Both of these are part of Caravan Next, a large scale European Social Community Theatre project.
For more visit also www.dox.cz.