My Contract with a Chair

My Contract with a Chair

a bodily experience

Idea, choreography: Sintija Siliņa
Dramaturgy: Evarts Melnalksnis
Performer
: Agnese Bordjukova
Sound: Maksims Šenteļevs
Set design: Rūdolfs Bekičs
Costumes: Kitija Geidāne
Poster: Līga Spunde
Produced by: Ģertrūdes ielas teātris
Duration: 1:30
Language: Latvian and English
Premiere 28/12/2022

Smoke and strobe lights used during this performance!

Created with the financial support of Riga City Council and the State Culture Capital Foundation.


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We are a society of sitters. The magnetic relationship between the buttocks and the chair is a contract innate to humanity. Each contract is at once universal and personal; therefore, every spectator becomes the central place of action in this performance. Everyone is trying to find their own chair, for some it’s a simple one, for others – a more influential one; and once they are accustomed to their place it is difficult to leave. It becomes part of their identity. We have no shortage of chairs – they are in bars, on trains, in the court, in the cultural canon, in the office… Chairs as far as the eye can see, and the people sitting in them – with a stabbing pain in their lower back, their shoulders hunched and a slight ringing in their ears. 206 bones, 360 joints and 650 muscles – that is what makes a human, and yet – how many of these are we using and how many do we stifle by sitting down?

The internal tension performance "My contract with the chair" is a bodily experience in which the audience will participate in and become complicit in the implementation of the politics of standing and sitting. The conceptual and at the same time poetic performance encourages physical awareness and observation of the states of your body in everyday situations. This is a story about rising up. Most likely, you too are reading this while sitting down. And it's probably time to get up.

National Dance Award 2021-2022: Best performer of the year - Agnese Bordjukova


Latvian Ministry of Welfare supports the European Social Fund project “Support for Social Entrepreneurship” No. 9.1.1.3/15/I/001.