Review of a production of Danse Macabre by the Ukrainian Dakh Daughters

Years later, the director Vlad Troitsky, founder of the independent Ukrainian theater Dakh, returned to the metropolis. In 2016, he was a guest at the Prague Crossroads festival with another project on the border between theater and music, a quartet DakhaBrakhawhich originally chaotically combines Ukrainian folklore with traditions of other ethnicities and contemporary artificial music.

The female band Dakh Daughters, which was formed in 2012 and was intended for export from the beginning, was later presented by the director in Prague’s Arš or at the Colors of Ostrava festival. But that was before the Russian war in Ukraine. After it began last year, Troitsky and his associates left the bombed-out Kyiv. From the tiny home stage – the Dakh theater also occupies only 240 square meters with a toilet, a storage room for decorations and a make-up room – he took only the most necessary and traveled to France, where he was invited by the intimate Normandy scene. He soon started working with Dakh Daughters on a new revue called Danse Macabre, in Czech translation Dance of Death.

Originally art theme depicts the dead man dancing with the living from various walks of life. It spread at the turn of the Middle Ages and the modern era, when in connection with plague epidemics it reminded of human finitude. However, the motif of the dance of death appeared in art even after the end of the Black Death, usually still in the 19th and 20th centuries. For the two-part drama of the same name, watch it borrowed for example, the Swedish writer August Strindberg.

In light of the war crimes that the Russian army is committing against Ukrainians today, Vlad Troitsky also returned to him this Tuesday in Prague. On the stage of the Comedy Theater, six female musicians and performers expressed themselves through music and singing, interspersed with verses from the biblical book of Job and borrowed stories of violence perpetrated by soldiers on the Ukrainian people.

The music oscillated between the post-punk genre and folk motifs, which increased with every minute and immersion in intimacy and pain. It was accompanied by images of the journey that Ukrainian women embark on. It leads to safety, away from rocket attacks and night fighting, but at the same time it means voluntary uprooting and loss of identity. It is also the path to knowledge that he underwent in the Bible Job through the loss of children, wealth and health, in order to reach happiness again through the pain and suffering experienced.

The pilgrimage of Ukrainian women has both an external and an internal perspective in Danse Macabre. From the beginning, suitcases are placed on the stage, which are transformed into models of glowing blocks of flats or private rooms of the actresses. White illuminated windows shine on the boards hung on the front of the luggage. They will turn red at one point, which indicates a bombardment. The women take them out of their luggage and form a border around which they sit, as if they want to start telling stories by the fire, following the example of their prehistoric predecessors. Instead, to the sound of the siren, they grab their suitcases and in balloons covering the negligees as a symbol of a quick escape, they move around the stage in slow motion stylization.

At one point, they open their portable house on wheels and reveal their soul with it. Every woman carries something different with her: children’s shoes and stuffed animals, lace decorations or natural things. As they illuminate the secret contents of their luggage with candles, the painting with a ghostly funeral atmosphere also evokes the imaginary graves of those closest to them – the people the protagonists lost in the fighting.

Since the Danse Macabre is performed only by women, the narrative and visual component of the production is dominated by the theme of motherhood and the female body from the point of view of war.

In the next part, the female exiles tell the audience what the escape from Ukraine meant for them personally. They also reproduce the fates of fellow citizens tested at home. Among the absurd-sounding events that combine the tragicomics of war, appalling brutality and inhumanity that attack the audience’s emotions predominate. At the same time, the more harrowing the confessions are, the more pathetic they sound in the overall impression.

It is, of course, tricky to accuse female artists of being overly emotional when reporting on a war destroying their entire country. In a similar situation, criticism can smack of hypocrisy or cynicism. However, it is not just a testimony, but an artistic artifact, for which it is true that less is sometimes more, and not all theatergoers are looking for tense emotionality. A bare statement, the speech of numbers and facts can sometimes affect a person far more than an exaggerated experience with proper tears of emotion gushing on the scene.

A suggestive but more sober theme at last year’s Palm Off Fest was a Ukrainian production called Beilis’ case. She commented on the present by reconstructing the case of a ritual murder from the beginning of the 20th century. She dispensed with tears and condescension, even though the performers were eyewitnesses to the current events – unlike the Dakh Daughters.

Vlad Troitsky and six female artists rely too much on emotion. Although it follows naturally from the theme, in the finale it overwhelms the successful visual ideas and the thought construction of the journey as a means to know and redeem the Ukrainian nation.