Spasmodic enchantment

Ágens-Attila Csabai: Passages-Company Kompmánia

The atmosphere is just as unique as Ágens' singing that accompanies ( or leads, to put it more precisely) the performance of Passages . She stands on the stage in a green limelight, like a fairy queen in the forest, wearing a green gown and an enormous crinoline. Her hair -carefully ornamented with all sorts of gadgets -stands on end and she is surrounded by widening textile-stripes that boldly reach for the sky like the rays of a halo. There are three plastic bags filled with water hanging from the ceiling and the dancers huddle under veils amidst some pieces of furniture. We get to know the proportion of genders only when they leave their shelter with slowly, carefully executed tense movements and it is two boys and one girl. They create a square with Ágens and they are so separated in the stocks of their own body and environment that they stay in their own territory until the final bow.

The three dancers are three different worlds and Ágens is the Universe itself. She (and the music by Ferenc Boudny) provide the guidelines of the performance and the dancers strictly follow the membrane-resonating sequence of sounds. Ágens sings with her arms as well, carving her sound-sculptures with dignified gestures.

The dancers' initial hesitating and tense movements bloom into wild and definite ones but this does not seem to help them to burst out from their misery, not even for a second. In the end they all fall into a state of motionless inertia. The man by the table dances in white shirts and trousers and tries to do something with the chairs, lies under them, then piles them up, gobbles some rice and sprinkles flour .

The girl wears only a night-gown on her naked body. At first she seems to have the most easy-going personality- she whispers something to the ears of some people in the audience, then she returns to her own place only to struggle with three basins. She rides them, flows her saliva into them and then pours the sticky nectar on her blonde locks. It is obvious that she does not enjoy this process but at least she is the most courageous of the three dancers.

The other boy- an Indian yogi and a Malayan dancer-girl in one person-appears on stage with his upper-body covered with white dust. He wears baggy trousers and sometimes he puts on oriental masks. He dances with slow, controlled movements stretching all his muscles. He is the least hysterical but when he smears blood on his mirror and anoints his body with some brownish substance we realize that he does not dance because of his high spirits, either. As the performance-that is similar to a rococo struggle locked into a bottle-proceeds the gestures get more radical. Trembling and wriggling they really try all variations but their struggles seem to be futile and end up in water-sprinkling. In the final scene the man sitting on a chair on the top of the table pierces the plastic bags with long, sharp nails. At least the water finds the way of liberation on this enchanted stage.