Suddenly, the words lost their meaning.
Not right now, when I am writing this text, but already almost two months ago – on February 24, 2022.
The very words that we use to motivate, convince, regret, ask for forgiveness, confess our love and explain to our children what it means «to be honest» have crumbled into letters and turned into prickly anti-tank hedgehogs. Now they only express the intention, but skillfully hide the meaning of the message behind complex constructions and intonations.
The words form the language by which we identify our national identity. The words unite us within this language. But we need more and more time to find the right ones and discard those that are no longer appropriate.
It turned out that now we need to find a way to prove the sincerity of some words and admit the failure of others. We need new evidence and perhaps a new language.
There is a feeling that of all the present we have only our body left. Sometimes strong, but more often weak and vulnerable. A body that hurts, bleeds, rejoices, admires and, of course, loves. A frank dancing body with its subtle ability to notice the implicit and perform what cannot be said in words.
The body that hears and feels gazing into the world around and at the same time declares its presence at every moment of time. A body that manifests the presence of a person with all its complexity and ambiguity.
The body insists on its ability to speak. And then the dance becomes the most honest mediator in communication. The world around us requires even more awareness and attentiveness to what has been said and, more importantly, what has not been said.
Dance becomes a necessity. The wisdom accumulated by the body of knowledge cannot be faked or replaced. A dancing person is a person who thinks and draws his wisdom from a source that is priceless.
Let’s Dance. And let a dance makes us honest and impartial.
Anton Ovchinnikov
The festival New Baltic Dance and Lithuanian Dance Information Center presents:
MONOCHROM
produced by Anton Ovchinnikov
Black O!Range Dance Productions
April 14 th, 2022
Morozivka Village, Kyiv region
Watch the film for free only on the 29th of April on the Lithuanian Dance Information Center platform:
On February 24, 2022, on the evening of the day when Russia began its war of conquest with Ukraine, I urgently left Kyiv and went into forced isolation. Kyiv began to be shelled with cruise missiles and I moved to the village of Morozivka, 50 km from Kyiv. I thought life would be safer there.
A week later, the war was 20 km from the place where I stayed. Around the clock we heard explosions and shooting, and a week later we got used to these sounds. Already in early April, Ukrainian Army drove out Russian troops from nearby villages and it became quiet here. Gradually, I began to regain mobility in my body and come out of the stupor. Then I decided to shoot a few videos of improvisations in order to look at the bodily transformations that happened to me from the outside. All the time before that, I felt completely paralyzed – I couldn’t force myself to move or do anything at all. The only thing I could do was writing poetry – suddenly the thoughts and the feelings began to take the form of words.
When I analyze my perception of events and information during this time, I get the impression that everything has become completely black and white. Halftones disappeared and all people were divided into “friends” and “foes”. In texts, which I began to collect on Facebook, I was searching for these same halftones to bring the ability to feel back in my life. It also become the ability to preserve the imaginative perception of the world beyond good and evil. I felt it was important to capture this moment. That`s how the movie come out of being isolated in war time.
There was no one to help me and I had to organize all the processes myself – shooting, editing and writing music.