Review

SEONA MAC RÉAMOINN reviews Dublin Dance Festival: Work in Regressat Project Cube Dublin

AUTHORITY IS a strange creature. Those who wield it most forcefully or despotically are often the most bereft when they no longer have subjects to control and regulate.

The fate of George Orwell’s Mr Jones, the former tyrannical farm manager who ended his days in a home for inebriates, was one of many starting points for Romanian choreographer/performer Ioana Mona Popovici’s quirky and engaging exploration of the solitary after-life of such fictional and real life figures.

She is the hunched figure in the corner at the sound and lighting control board (ironically Popovici is in charge of all aspects of this performance).

Her dawning realisation that she is completely alone triggers almost childish gestures; throwing sweets and small bouncing balls defiantly and in a perfect melodramatic tantrum fit, she smashes a raw egg against the wall.

The loss of human subjects leads to the creation of a parallel control system over personal objects and property. Those historical and contemporary authority types who used humans as playthings now has a reverse absurd and chilling resonance. This work is carefully controlled, as Popovici’s character regresses to childhood to recall how to control the chaos. The hole appearing in her red sock is repaired with a lump of squashed thread and some Sellotape. In a later sequence, she plays an imaginary game of cards with a small figurine, which she then imprisons in a cardboard box watched over by a small toy dog.

An episode with a camera has particular sinister undertones, as she takes a photo of herself complete with glasses and woolly hat.

Then, in a triggered memory of surveillance technique, she removes the film, dashes to the lab and reappears with the enlarged image.

The photo is actually of the head of a woolly sheep but unphased by the seeming lack of correspondence or continuity she takes out a pen and adds a pair of spectacles.

In the final phase of this honed-down knowing performance, she retreats to her corner, drinks a pint of milk, checks on the imprisoned toys with her torch and no doubt sleeps the sleep of the damned.