LT Artists in Europe – Gretė Šmitaitė, Dovydas Strimaitis

Location: Ukmergės kultūros centras

Free admission.

CRACKS

Grėtė Šmitaitė

Lithuania

Duration: 20 min.

Cracks starts from the dystopia caused by being alone. Yet, the person cannot manage to stay ‘one’. Being cracked and multiple, the person hides one’s complexity and so violates oneself. Scratching one’s robustness, one meets oneself striving to relate. 

The person lays down on the ground. The rain is falling on one’s cheeks. The wind is in the branches above one’s head. One starts to feel an overwhelming desire to relate with oneself and other living and dead humans, places, animals, plants and seasons. 

Grėtė Šmitaitė is a dancer and choreographer working and living in Switzerland, Germany and Lithuania. She graduated from dance and choreography studies at Berlin University of Arts and has worked with choreographers such as Doris Uhlich, Min Tanaka, Anna Aristarkhova. Since 2014 she has been a practitioner of the Body Weather technique. Since 2021 she studies clowning and creativity with Ira Seidenstein. Šmitaitė’s pieces were presented at Uferstudios Berlin, Amsterdam Het Veem, Sõltumatu Tantsu Lava Tallinn and Arts Printing House Vilnius.

Mentor: Ira Seidenstein

Light: Monika Šerstabojevaitė 

Photo: Philipp Weinrich

HAIRY 2.0

Dovydas Strimaitis 

Lithuania

Duration: 20 min.

Hairy 2.0 is a choreographic piece for a dancer and his hair. Hair is one of the few parts of the human body that one cannot move voluntarily and directly. Choreography and dance, on the other hand, can be seen as an art of physical (self-)control. Choreographing hair, thus, carries in itself a dramatic tension – how to control the uncontrollable. This tension is the starting point of Hairy 2.0. Because of its uncontrollable nature, hair can be seen as an entity separate from our body, yet dependent on it. Hair is a boundary, limit both separating us from and connecting us to what is physically outside of us, what is not us. A choreography made for hair thus raises ontological questions related to our identity, our body and its autonomy. Loose long hair has very strong symbolic meaning in the Western society. It invokes freedom, romanticism, naturalness, and liberation from tradition or oppression. Strimaitis uses all these symbols as a formalist tool in order to develop counterpoints not only in timing and space, but also in meaning.

Concept, choreography, dance: Dovydas Strimaitis

Music: Julijona Biveinytė, Johann Sebastian Bach (interpreted by Yo-Yo Ma)

Lighting design: Lisa M. Barry

Hairy 2.0 by Dovydas Strimaitis was made possible and originally produced by Conny Janssen Danst and Dansateliers (Rotterdam, The Netherlands).