PYGMALION NULLPUNKTEINS

In Ovid’s classical narrative, the artist Pygmalion leads a withdrawn life. Secluded from women and the world, he carves the perfect woman out of ivory, later referred to as Galathea. Venus, the goddess of love, breathes life into Pygmalion’s sculpture, enabling a sexual connection between the artist and his work. This contemporary dance piece seizes the wishes and desires woven into the story. It follows the longing for a double, the counterpart that mirrors oneself, a lover. It follows the desire to fully understand oneself and to be fully understood.The dance absorbs the entire material. The performer Silke Grabinger plays all roles, the renouncing Pygmalion, the created Galathea and the unifying Venus. This is an attempt to avoid Venus’s intervention – the object’s transformation to a subject is not her doing anymore. Instead, it is the combination of Jeremy Joseph’s organ music, Fabian Rucker’s sound design and saxophone tones and Grabinger’s choreography that brings life to the artwork. The goddess of love is now only present in the act of union rather than in the act of creation, which enables the piece to assert art’s radical promise of happiness: by living withdrawn from the world, something truly vivid is created. ‘It’, this something, then reunites with the world, delighting it with its freedom.