Hot Lollipop
Authors and performers: Ljiljana Tasic & Dusan Brocic
Music: Dusan Brocic
Year of production: 2010
Duration: 30 minutes
"
In general terms, it deals with popular culture, especially rock’n’roll music. The authors explore various performances, motions and bodily and vocal expressions that characterize rock’n’roll and that are usually seen genuine, original, and spontaneous. However, Ljiljana Tasic and Dusan Brocic take them as already codified and stereotypical constructions and deconstruct them meticulously, trying to recognize and isolate their elements, rules and structures. This way, they are transformed into choreographic material, and appeared in their precisely and mostly slow-motion restored performance in the Hot Lollipop show as artificial, abstract, and obviously constructed. This procedure tells us the (hi)story of rock’n’roll that from the 1960s to nowadays has transformed from a rebellion against social rules and restrictions of individual freedom into the industry of the spectacle whose images simulate rebellion and are only complicit with the existing social order. Telling the story of rock’n’roll Hot Lollipop make us also think about contemporary dance, being based on the ideas of individual emancipation of the body and its freedom of expression, excluded from codified and restrictive classical ballet. Meanwhile, the expressions of spontaneity and authenticity of the contemporary dance body have become codified signs that serve almost only as a proof of contemporaneity. In broader sense, Hot Lollipop annoyingly reveals that even in our everyday, private life many expressions, gestures and modes of behavior that we consider personal and our own are in fact produced and generated by the pop-culture images...
"
Ana Vujanovic
freelance theorist of performing arts and culture, Ph.D. in theatre studies
Music: Dusan Brocic
Year of production: 2010
Duration: 30 minutes
"
In general terms, it deals with popular culture, especially rock’n’roll music. The authors explore various performances, motions and bodily and vocal expressions that characterize rock’n’roll and that are usually seen genuine, original, and spontaneous. However, Ljiljana Tasic and Dusan Brocic take them as already codified and stereotypical constructions and deconstruct them meticulously, trying to recognize and isolate their elements, rules and structures. This way, they are transformed into choreographic material, and appeared in their precisely and mostly slow-motion restored performance in the Hot Lollipop show as artificial, abstract, and obviously constructed. This procedure tells us the (hi)story of rock’n’roll that from the 1960s to nowadays has transformed from a rebellion against social rules and restrictions of individual freedom into the industry of the spectacle whose images simulate rebellion and are only complicit with the existing social order. Telling the story of rock’n’roll Hot Lollipop make us also think about contemporary dance, being based on the ideas of individual emancipation of the body and its freedom of expression, excluded from codified and restrictive classical ballet. Meanwhile, the expressions of spontaneity and authenticity of the contemporary dance body have become codified signs that serve almost only as a proof of contemporaneity. In broader sense, Hot Lollipop annoyingly reveals that even in our everyday, private life many expressions, gestures and modes of behavior that we consider personal and our own are in fact produced and generated by the pop-culture images...
"
Ana Vujanovic
freelance theorist of performing arts and culture, Ph.D. in theatre studies