Soft Spot

“Soft Spot” is a science fiction drama performance series choreographed by Przemek Kamiński. The show, released in May 2018, stars Przemek Kamiński, Suvi Kemppainen, Julia Plawgo and Alistair Watts. Set in the fictional city of Berlin, Germany, in the late 2010s, it portrays four strangers whose lives become connected due to a strange dream.

The first season focuses on the group’s search for the legendary soft spot, amongst supernatural events happening around the city. It consists of five episodes – “What we saw in the dream”, “Full Moon”, “The Cave/Time Warp”, “I Knew You Were Waiting” and “To the Mountain/Nucleus” – that can be presented separately or in any order. Each of them reveals a different part of a choreographic mystery.

[…] ”Soft Spot” can be inscribed into the trend that I would call retro-futurism. […] Aesthetic layer is built on a specific vision of the future, rooted in the pop-culture sentiment of the 70s and 80s, densely inspired by the new transformation of the aesthetics of this time. […] The performance permeates the children's seriousness of the ritual, the atmosphere of the bodily community of souls, curiosity and nostalgia related to what will come. The question arises, what actually happens before our eyes: what has already happened, what will come, or what we fantasised about as children?
[…] The irony of the quote coexists here with the serious treatment of the presence of dancers. Their faces are focused, as if immersed in a trance: their eyes are either freezing or moving slowly, scanning the space around them. The disturbance of time perception is experienced by changes in tempo: from strongly choreographic, dynamic structures, dancers pass to posed scenes, resembling rather suspended film frames. The project consists of five sections, the order of which changes each time: the dancers themselves determine their order by means of ritual gestures.

Teresa Fazan, taniecPOLSKA.pl

CREDITS

Soft Spot
2018, performance, 100 min

Choreography: Przemek Kamiński
Creation and Performance: Przemek Kamiński, Suvi Kemppainen, Julia Plawgo, Alistair Watts
Dramaturgy: Mateusz Szymanówka
Costumes: Konrad Parol
Photos: Jakub Świetlik

Funded by Senate Department for Culture and Europe
Support: Polish Institute Berlin, Tanzfabrik Berlin, TATWERK | Performative Forschung