Everybody is like paint: the evening of the Battle Performance dance theatre was held in Almaty

Today, on the stage of the Total Theatre, the audience enjoyed three completely different performances and got acquainted with a relatively new genre for Kazakhstan — plastic theatre.

Plastic performances are combination of choreography, light, musical accompaniment and costumes, conveying a variety of meanings.

Battal Performance was created as part of the project ”New Stage“ from the dance laboratory called ”Jolda". The preparation took about three months under the guidance of choreographers: Nikita Podlobko, Frank Valdez, Emil Albekov and Tomiris Mettybayeva. The three productions are united by the theme of the concepts of humanity and unity in society. The authors of each of the performances are distinguished by an original creative vision and approach. 

Nikita Podlobko and Frank Valdez staged a performance with the participants of the experimental course from “Jolda”. There are 10 girls with no professional dance experience are involved in the performance. 

“In this format, this is really my debut, I used to create dance in other styles. My inner need is to talk about the unity and universality of simple principles that we observe in life,“ says Nikita Podlobko, curator of the Jolda Dance Laboratory.

Nikita Podlobko, the curator of the Jolda Dance Laboratory, is a professional dancer and teacher, who has been teaching paired social dance in Almaty for the last 8 years. The experimental platform has become a space for the director to create and implement the accumulated experience from different styles.

“Plastic theatre allows us to reflect a variety of interaction scenarios in the world of different fields of people. Through the body, we want to show the mystery of the world and the cyclicity of human life, these themes run through all the processes around us like a red thread,” the choreographer adds.  

Вторая участница проекта — Томирис Меттыбаева, учится на режиссера-хореографа в академии искусств им. Жургенова и работает в театре современного танца “Самрук”. В постановке Томирис задействовано восемь человек – коллеги по театру, с которыми она ранее ставила перформанс в Almaty Gallery.

“The main idea of my new performance is that every person is like paint. Yellow, blue, red — all multi-coloured. Like people, all colours interact with each other, thanks to which they change themselves and affect others,” Tomiris Mettybayeva notes.

The author's performance in the evening program will also be presented by the choreographer of the Interius Theater, choreographer and one of the curators of the New Stage project – Emil Goyarovich. The idea of his performance arose in the process of preparation, when participants got acquainted with various Contemporary techniques and basic exercises, and also learned contact improvisation built on trust.

"As the basis of the performance, I took the work of the American choreographer of modern dance Simone Forti "A bunch of small". This is a great example of human interaction, working with weight, with the body, respect and trust. It seems to me that this is the most difficult, but at the same time the most interesting element of the whole performance. A total of 8 people are involved in the project.”

After the performances a discussion was held with the participation of choreographers. At first, they seemed to be avoiding the questions of the audience, who were constantly trying to find out what was hidden behind the amazing movements and gestures of the actors. But soon became clear that the answers were hidden in everyone who witnessed the actions held on stage. "All the performances are really about the one thing, just like in life — all the lyrics, all the songs, all the dances are about love," summed up the head of the dance laboratory Zhanna Tulendy.

The dance laboratory “Jolda” was founded in 2020 in Almaty. Its first evening of performances took place in Almaty in November 2021 . The audience witnessed three performances — fragment of future plastic performances: “The skin I live in”, “Leila” by Frank Valdez, and “The Amplitude of Silence” from the theatre “Il Silenzio". The show took place on the stage of the Transforma Theater and gathered a full hall – about 100 spectators. New performances also touch on social and current issues.