2001

World Theatre Day Message 2001

Published by International Centre of Cultural Relations Mumbay India

from the Swedish choreographer Efva Lilja

See – all that is perceptible, movement, smell – all that is hurled towards us to fall into oblivion or to lure us into making discoveries. DANCE. It is you who give dance its meaning. It is in the encounter with you that dance comes into being.

The creativity of the human being is the foundation of every form of development. This is why we have to create space for the creative capacity. To accept the challenge and do the impossible. If culture is defined as the form we give our social life, art becomes of vital importance to our understanding of each other. Through our artistic expression we can decipher the current state of culture. What is your life like? We construct our identity in the awareness of a cultural belonging. In this sense we are all in motion. Subjective experience has its place. Our individual memories and experience are the only tool we have to understand what goes on around us, both in our daily life and in art. In the encounter with dance we find room for all these differences of ours. Dance as the shadows thrown by our intimations and our instinctive actions. Dance as that place with room enough for all our longings and dreams.

I see working with dance as a form of fundamental linguistic research. This is so exciting. Movement possesses a linguistic identity which can also be deciphered in terms of cultural codes: gestures, our way of walking, our way of relating to the world around us. Dance provides a means to work through our connection to the past, to what once was. I “do not make up” what becomes the subject of the dance. It comes into being because it once was. I follow the tracks and find impressions left in the wake of the past. It is there that a NOW is formed. A reflection of our present.

This is a way of looking at a work, as a rediscovered context which can make the isolation bearable. As that which will give us space for everything which exists beyond words. As that which makes visible the very pulse and rhythm of life. Dance has within it possibilities as yet undreamt of...

Download as pdf

Back