Nele Tiidelepp <can we take a moment to appreciate the sunset>

Nele Tiidelepp

can we take a moment to appreciate the sunset

06.07.24 20:30 Georg-Büchner-Saal

 

 

In this work, Nele Tiidelepp creates a gentle landscape of suspended moments and in-between spaces. Delicately collaged are things that happen in the offbeat, that seldomly draw our attention, yet exist in every corner of our lives as tiny escapes from the relentless forces of solidification. 

The work takes place in an old, now-empty university library, dimly lit in an amber hue, as three performers slowly begin to meander through the space. Caressing the trees in the atrium garden, leaning against the slanted wall, climbing up and down the stairs, this slow, unobtrusive yet attentive stroll begins the work by suspending its beginning. In this way, the work gradually opens up a world in which time is suspended from its linear directionality, creating a bubble that unfolds into a space of contemplation.

What follows is a sequence of movements in a steady rhythm, as simple as a half-step forward and back or a tap on the shoulder, or a bend of the arm. Each movement is repeated a number of times, sometimes simultaneously between all the performers, sometimes at different beats. The movements create an ever-changing loop of three performers coming into sync and then slipping out of sync with each other. The bodies carrying out this repetitive movement show no interest in conveying meaning; the relaxed movements are neither expressions, repetitions, nor boasts of technique. But precisely because the choreography lacks any intention of delivering a statement or a dramaturgical build-up, remaining rather as repetitions of simple movements, it allows the viewer to notice the fragile offbeats—the spaces between bodies that barely meet and then drift apart again, small slips in the steps or tweaks in the angles of the arms, the split seconds of pauses before coming into sync, the birds chirping indifferently from outside. 

Where meaning and expression have given way, one begins to observe the smallest particles that fill the seemingly void space. These are the particles of the offbeat. The half steps, the midair gasps, the swelling of the lungs before exhaling. The pauses in a song, the lyrics that repeat but feel different each time. The trembling, the tension, the waiting. The times when it’s not quite over, but nothing has begun anew. The always familiar in the ever-new, the ever-new in the always familiar. These particles elude the coagulating grasp of points and solids, but rather form lines that flow through these points, vibrations that permeate the stable and lead our path into the unpredictable and contingent.

The minimal background sound that underpins the repetitive movement—played live by a musician—transforms into a more melodic and lyrical music. The atmosphere is lightened and as if letting in fresh air, a performer opens the back door of the performance space and moves to the space outside. She perches on a railing and gazes toward the inside. The place where she sits becomes a strange in-between space—through this  space at the door we come to observe three different worlds coexisting in one frame, the fictional world of the artwork, the world of reality, and the transitory world in-between. On the stage, another performer begins to repeat the same movements, but this time very slowly, adding to the layers of space, layers of time. In respect of the performer sitting in the outside and the cars in the real world passing by behind her, time inside the performance space feels out of joint. It begins to warp, creating a sense of surreality. In the next sequences, a series of playful gestures and seemingly incomplete movements unfold in repetition. Like a frozen computer or lagging video, the movements and music do not advance forward but simply repeat in pixelated frames and prolonged rhythms. Time ceases to flow in its metric rhythm, driven into the future, but begins to hover, elongated and postponed. We land in a time and space slightly off the metronome, off the highway, in a whirlpool of offbeats. It is a world of commas and ellipses, not periods and exclamation marks. In this suspended spatio-temporality, the myth of progress is defied—it is allowed to be slow, to delay, to remain premature, to miss the target. Inefficiency, detour, and failure take on a different tinge.

In the final section, the performers chatter and conjecture, “Could it be this?” Though we are not told what they are conjecturing about, the little snippets they share allude to the moments of offbeat that occur in our mundane lives. For instance, the moment of silence after a performance ends and the lights go out, just before the applause begins, a moment you wish would last forever. We all have memories of those moments when you hold your breath, moments that you dearly want to grasp, and yet you know they are beautiful because they will eventually slip through your fingers. After all, no matter how fleeting and trivial they may seem, these are the moments that can make all the difference in the world to the person who experiences them. Once the person has experienced this offbeat moment as a rupture, the world will have changed; however small the change, it will never be the same. Indeed, the three performers repeat the same movements for the last time, and you notice how oddly unfamiliar they seem. The beauty of in-between offbeats lies in the capacity to brew these ruptures. For this reason, the spatio-temporal cocoon that the performance creates through repetition does not feel like stagnation. You are invited to wait for something in this suspended time, to wait for something you are not sure will come, but it is this unknowability that spawns the magic. It’s where possibilities are dreamed of, where speculative potentials are incubated. 

You know the magic has happened when you walk out of the performance space into a blazing sunset of a summer night, and this everyday phenomenon suddenly takes your breath away. Captivated by the sheer beauty of the sunset—neither day nor night, itself an in-between time and space—you return home realizing that the work has opened your eyes to a world of infinite offbeats, that you would no longer need to travel to find the new.