KNOCK-KNOCK-KNOCK
Liza Baliasnaja & Vera Boitcova
What is the connection between hospitality and fear? In the performance KNOCK-KNOCK-KNOCK, Liza Baliasnaja and Vera Boitcova, who first met in the residency programme, approach the theme through the lens of their shared cultural background rooted in Russian language and Slavic culture. The work is a tapestry of folk horror narratives woven into a performative gesture of hosting. In KNOCK-KNOCK-KNOCK the meeting between the performers and the spectators takes the form of the meeting between a host and a guest.
The predicate of a “good hostess” is often central to a normative female upbringing within Russian speaking household. Similarly, being a “good guest” carries a strong sense of ethical normativity. A good host and a good guest interact smoothly, within a totality of dos and don’ts present in the particular use of language and sensible understanding of space and time in the home of the other. But what happens when this smoothly functioning relationship is threatened by misunderstandings, lack of shared cultural practice and the confusing power dynamic? When does hosting turn into taking someone hostage? At what point being a “bad guest” could imply affirming one’s agency?
In KNOCK-KNOCK-KNOCK, the artists explore the deviant paths of hospitality. Looking at iconographies of fear in Slavic fairy tales, led Baliasnaja and Boitcova to explore camouflage as a performative strategy. They discovered that one of the central features that makes things “fearful” is their shape- shifting, deceiving, “unexpectedly appearing from nowhere” nature. By politicizing the situation of hosting and guesting, KNOCK-KNOCK-KNOCK reflects on how violence can appear as kindness in the context of migration where we “enter other countries” and are treated as good or bad guests.
About the artists
Liza Baliasnaja is a Cologne based choreographer, performer, and pedagogue working between Germany and Lithuania. Combining research in movement, language, and voice, her choreographic works investigate shapes and patterns of thinking and reading the world. She is interested in questioning the historical, political and social fabrics that tailor our sense of the self. Liza completed dance studies in Brussels at P.A.R.T.S and a BA in philosophy at the University of KU Leuven. Over the last years she presented her works at festivals like Radiant Nights (Antwerp), Batard (Brussels), New Baltic Dance (Vilnius), Almost Summer/ Feminist Futures (Kortrijk). As a performer, collaborator, and outside eye, she worked with artists including Eszter Salamon, Christine De Smedt, Lenio Kaklea, Mårten Spångberg, Ula Sickle and Lina Lapelytė among others.
Vera Boitcova is a theater director, playwright, curator, queer performance/video artist and political activist. Vera is a PhD candidate at the University of the Arts, Helsinki. She graduated from BA Directing – St. Petersburg Theatre Arts Academy, Russia (2011), Master in Theater and Performance (Queen Mary University of London, UK) and in Dramaturgy (Goethe University Frankfurt, Germany). She is an artist of the Future Lab EU program and an associate artist of Globe Art Point Helsinki. Vera is a former curator/coordinator of Eve’s Ribs Festival of Feminist Art and QueerFest (Russia).
