Migration Sonata: United by a common physical language

Migration Sonata

Watergate Theatre, Kilkenny

★★★★☆

The choreographer John Scott has probably never used as many words as in his latest dance. Yet seldom have so many words delivered so little meaning. It’s the intriguing paradox at the centre of Migration Sonata: the more that is spoken the less that is understood. It’s an artistic decision that is both deliberate and highly effective.

Commissioned by Kilkenny Arts Festival, Migration Sonata has been developed through workshops with the city’s Ukrainian and Brazilian migrant community over the past nine months. Five of them – Yevheniia Dmytrenko, Oksana Kurovets, Helena Krasna, Ana Mukhina and Iryna Tarnavska – seamlessly join the cast of professional dancers on stage.

Passages of Ukrainian emerge throughout the dance, along with bursts of other languages often uttered at the same time, to create a vocal cacophony. But whereas the words might be unintelligible, their common physical language unites people irrespective of borders.

Early in the dance, one performer recites verse by the Ukrainian poet Yevgeny Yevtushenko, embellishing it with physical gestures. Without their meaning understood, the words take on an abstract musical quality: soft rhythmic consonants and vowels, punctuated within an undulating vocal intonation. Attention instead focuses on the narrator’s movements, which fellow dancers gradually mirror as they gather around her. The meaning of head-clasping hands, outstretched palms or clenched fists is universal. Here, expressed in unison, they illustrate solidarity and underline the commonality of human experience.

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The physical language goes beyond simple gestures, often bursting out in sprawling horizontal jumps that land with an unsettling crunch, or with all 12 performers creating stuttering, mazy runs around the stage. Whatever the action, it is performed with a strong sense of community, not necessarily through razor-sharp timing but always through a shared spirit and energy. Even when they are not dancing, performers rearrange the stage or light colleagues with follow spots.

Although Migration Sonata underplays the importance of understanding words in different languages, it doesn’t discount the importance of these words’ simply being spoken and heard within broader society. What is most important, as this dance shows, is the coming together, the doing and the artistic breaking of bread.