FESTIVAL FEATURES | My Land
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relieved as he eats dinner after My Land’s opening night in Budapest. His brand new show got a standing ovation from the crowd just an hour before. ‘I was so, so proud of them. It’s funny to me to watch these macho men, all under 25, getting up on stage and suddenly being so incredibly graceful and elegant. They train eight hours a day. They’re normal guys, Catholic boys, some with young families, they smoke. Sure, of course they smoke! I don’t tell them what to do – they know what’s best for their bodies.’
He he laughs when remembers one of the performers showing up for rehearsals one day with a big coloured tattoo of him and his girlfriend on his ribs. ‘I couldn’t believe it! He performs with a bare chest. But it’s cool – he just spends extra time in hair and makeup before the show.’
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in the other’s torso around head, counterbalancing in handstands and human towers, all with a serene expression on their faces, while presumably hoping the veins their neck aren’t about to pop. Another highlight the opening act, who looks like a slow- motion Rudolf Nureyev in training for the Olympic men’s gymnastics. It would be rude to reduce Andrii Spatar to a six-pack, but there’s clearly a reason Vági has put him i rst on the bill, with his top off. His lean torso is ridged like a medical diagram of muscles, and he works through gymnastic poses in a balletic, controlled way, keeping a glacial, rather than breakneck pace for his l uid routine. There are also impressive jugglers who battle in a Streeti ghter-style scene and a solo dance i nale, balancing on top of a ladder and synchronised with folk music.
Vági
found tonight’s stars while looking for 90 performers for the opening ceremony of the World Swimming Championships. for He’s made a name himself in Hungary for mixing contemporary dance, physical theatre and traditional circus skills and was asked to choreograph last year’s huge, bells and whistles show on the banks of the Danube, where lasers and i reworks went crazy in a massive spectacle underneath Budapest’s Royal Palace. Vági couldn’t i nd enough acrobats for it in Hungary though, so he went looking for talent over the border. Vági’s own family left Hungary during the communist era when he was a child, relocating to Germany. He then settled in the UK, studying dance and becoming a graduate choreographer and director of the Liverpool Institute for Performing Arts, before returning to Budapest.
He was originally looking just for male acrobats in Ukraine, but couldn’t leave Yevheniia Obolonina behind after he watched her performing with her contortionist partner, Roman Khai zov. The pair perform a jaw-dropping (occasionally eye-watering) routine in My Land where Obolonina tiptoes delicately on Khai zov’s arched solar plexus or drops casually into the splits over his elastic-looking ribs. Vági also signed up twin brothers, Andrii and Mykola Pysiura, who do a staggeringly precise routine of delicate hand acrobatics, spinning one’s
30 THE LIST FESTIVAL 1–8 Aug 2018
‘Ukrainian acrobats start training from a very young age and the standards are incredibly high,’ says Vági. ‘But often these exceptional performers end up working on cruise ships, or for touristy audiences in dinner clubs that aren’t even paying attention.’
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Vági wrote show especially for the performers and looked into Ukrainian myths and folklore while creating it – although any narrative arc is pretty vague, besides references to the land and soil where they are from. Vági also went to extreme lengths to i nd traditional Ukrainian, Tatar (an ethnic minority group in Ukraine) and Moldovian music for the score, visiting villages to learn about local instruments and folk songs. A beautiful male chant that is heard in the background of one of the scenes, where the performers slink about in Assassin’s Creed cloaks, was recorded especially by monks in a remote mountain monastery, after Vági heard them singing on YouTube and got in touch with them.
It’s both a butch ballet and a circus in slow motion, with no traditional strongman with a dumbbell and striped singlet in sight, just raw talent from Ukraine, writhing in the dirt, taking stripped-back circus to new heights. My Land, Assembly Roxy, 3–26 Aug (not 8,13, 20), 8.10pm, £12–£14 (£11–£13). Previews 1 & 2 Aug, £10.