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40/40

40/40

The ZOO Fringe

By Luisa Hahn

Kat (Katherina Radeva) is a writer, theatre creator, costume maker, artist, 40-year-old, migrant, and done explaining herself. Instead, she shows herself through her dancing on a stage of taped lines, shapes, and figures. The tape artwork grows every show and will only be completed at the end of 40/40’s run at the Fringe. On these shapes Kat moves to very different pieces of music, from modern beats over 80s synth pop to yodelling and Romanian folk music

As the music changes, so do the moves, the mood, and the outfits – which Kat changes on stage. Even though or maybe because Kat is not a trained dancer, her performance is powerfully vulnerable. The intimacy radiating from her movement is increased through the close physical proximity of performer and audience, who is seated on the stage, a device familiar from other Two Destination Language shows.

Despite being fed up with it, Kat does end up explaining herself and her story a little through voice recordings played between dances. And though some of what she says was already obvious through her physical performance (e.g. that she does not like being put into boxes) it is evident that it is important for her to tell us these things not just through her unapologetic, joyous dancing but also through her words. Like how her ex-husband advised her to spend some time alone after their divorce, not seeing that as a migrant in the UK Kat is always alone.

Not confining herself to a profession, her show, too, is not confined to a single genre but is a celebration and contemplation of her life that she shares with the audience not as a final product but as a moment in time, an artwork defined by its context.