András Déri’s Mysterium Cosmographicum is an attempt at a contemporary dance ritual. It is an interactive performance with live music, where the audience is invited to witness a search for the cosmos. As ceremony master, Déri invites them to a ritual in a musical and geometric structure inspired by Platonic solids. His interplay with the saxophonist circling between the participants and the drummer culminates in an opportunity for dancing together.
Comments by the audience:
„Rite, music danced and dance played as music.”
„Search, discovery, initiation.”
„I saw three equal performers and the audience. I heard three different, but coherent melodies and noise. I experienced togetherness, a lack of separation between the performers and the audience. I felt the rhythm, the power of smile and touch.“
“The power that is in him radiates. Somehow I feel with him. I saw the sounds, I heard the waves, the cracking of the fire , the strife of the soul and the coming to life. “
The theme of the four elements opened an inexhaustible world for András Déri and his collaborators, saxophonist Zsolt Varga and experimental musician György Szatmári. They were looking for the relations between the micro-macro dimensions of the universe, conscious and subconscious levels of life. Throughout the process, they began to focus on dance as ritual, a sacred communal event. Dance as an ancient spiritual tool gives us an opportunity to connect with each other, with ourselves, with the past, the present and the future. A searching person aims to find harmony within themself, to create a cosmos amongst the chaos of endless dynamics inside and around us.
In this production, made with the support of the Zoltán Imre Program of the National Cultural Fund of Hungary in 2018, Déri has been continuing his research that he begun in 2015 during his creation of “Elements” with experimental musician György Szatmáry, in the framework of the Movement 100+ residency program of Orkesztika Foundation. Moving to the next level, he invited saxophonist Zsolt Varga as well, leading to even more complex improvisation research, where various forms of mystical trinities could appear.
The creation found its form in an interactive performance, where the audience participates in a ritualistic, communal event, with the possibility to initiate them into the “mystery”. András Déri rethinks the conventions of the genre and role categories (musician-dancer, viewer-performer) and of the theatrical space. As a “ceremony master” he invites the audience on stage in his very proximity for a communal experience. Following the impacts of the improvised dance, sound and rhythm interactions, the participants can give in to the desire to join a communal free dance, instead of remaining passive observers of the event.
„Déri’s Mysterium Cosmographicum quotes Kepler’s work with the same title at first sight, but it goes far beyond, more precisely dives into it. While the German astrologer puts the six planets, known at his age, in hierarchical, divine order, Déri is looking for the cosmos within the human. He starts from and goes forward to the projection of the inner world, where he visualizes the four main elements, fire-water-earth-air, and us, people as the fifth. He does not just show the elements with his movements, but lets himself be reformed by these qualities.
The elements of the universe are equal: he, concluding all the elements, amongst us, exists, dances. Taking our vibrations and reacting to them, he creates his own orbit, and draws irregular circles like a flexible planet. He is not defined by physical standards, but we, audience members, affect him. This approach reflects not only a romantic-holistic literary-philosophical point of view, but it is able to place this theme in a post-Einstein world order. Déri’s Mysterium Cosmographicum not only a new witness of the „everything-is-connected-to-everything” concept, but also (finally) a recognition of an existing model, that he makes his own ars poetica.”
(Kristóf Farkas, dancecritic, 2019)
Credits:
concept/choreography/dance: András Déri
composer/musician/performer: György Szatmári, Zsolt Varga
mentor: Márta Ladjánszki
light: Orsolya Pete / Balázs Rimóczi
Production partner: L1 Association
Supporters:
National Cultural Found of Hungary
NKA Imre Zoltán Program Ideiglenes Kollégium
L1 Assosication
Sín Arts Center
Bakelit Multi Art Center
Workshop Foundation
Orkesztika Foundation– MOHA – Mozdulatművészek Háza
Kalahradaya – Universal Home of Art
Culture and Spirituality – Kalkutta, India