Barokthegreat are without doubt currently one of the most exciting companies on the young Italian dance and performance scene. They recently staged “Indigenous”, a vibrant sound-dance drama that captivated audiences with its uncanny and dark aura. For “Victory Smoke”, repetitive sequences of chords on the electric guitar and the beat of a cymbal make up the incantation for choreographed movement. Dance between focused condensation, ecstatic moments, and the calm before the storm.
In their latest piece, Barokthegreat celebrate the excitement before the victory smoke, that magic moment before you cross the threshold to success. In terms of dramaturgy, they develop their piece on the basis of the idea of hunting. However who exactly is hunting – poachers, head-hunters, ivory or pheasant hunters – is not revealed. And the elation of the victors effaces the identity of their victims, the vanquished. It is this mythical image of capture around which the performers revolve as if in delirium.
“Victory Smoke” is the group’s attempt to redefine the act of physical interaction between hunter and hunted. To this end, they evoke the image of victory which is exaggerated in iconography and sculpture in the history of culture. And they assume that triumph is manifested today in a tormenting form: efficiency, compulsion to achieve, and self-optimisation are dominant factors that, among other things, influence how we behave in relationships.