28/03/2003

TICKETHOLDERS
by Travis Michael Holder
Metamorphoses, Poland's Staniewski Center at the Getty

What a treat to have this magical troupe from the experimental Staniewski Center for Theatre Practices in Gardzienice, Poland, come to play for us at the Getty.
How sad it was for only one performance.
The Center's "theatrical essay," Metamorphoses or the Golden Ass, According
to Lucius Apuleius, is a unique revival of the spirit of the pre-Christian
era interpreted by Tomasz Rodowitz, Mariusz Golaj, Marcin Mrowca,
Elzbieta Rojek, Joanna Holcgreber, Dorota Porowska, Anna Helena McLean, Grzegorz Podbieglowski, Anna Dabrowska and Agnieszka Mendel, a 10-member group of world-class clown-dancer-acrobat-musicians who recreate an amazing evening of ancient Greek theatre. Interwoven with synchronistic music
and movement so surreal one could almost feel as though he were transported back to the 2nd century A.D., the presentation is accompanied by castmembers adept at such things as playing the cello while sounding vocally exactly like the instrument. They whirl and sweat with mesmerizing pagan-esque abandonment, bopping each other energetically on the head like a Three Stooges skit, bending one another over into complicated, sometimes erotic positions, singing songs
that sound straight out of Fellini's Satyricon.
After the presentation, the troupe returned to the stage to join for a lecture
led by the Center's founder and director Wlodzimierz Staniewski, who explained what it is they try to accomplish-or, more to the point, recreate. They ran slides showing fragments of writing on Greek vases and jars which have been translated into their songs, then showed us with their own bodies how the angular two
-dimensional movement of the human figures also depicted were transformed
into the dances of their presentation. To say it was fascinating to observe
and uplifting to the human spirit are both major understatements.
Staniewski compares their art to a quote from Nietsche: "Theatre is like wolves raging within us." If the wolves raging in the Staniewski Center's Metamorphoses were any more fierce, the audience would have been running for the exits
like reporters when King Kong broke through his chains. Seeing this amazing
work is something I won't soon forget. Maybe we can all join together to bring these exceptionally talented and creatively unstoppable artists back to the Getty another time soon.
i