WE ARE TOO MANY is NOT a dance performance ABOUT hidden narcism, shameless exhibitionism, failing spectacle, unbearable loneliness and(im)possible community. It is rather an event in which all of these aspects of theatrical situation are performed "in real time". However, this does not imply that WE ARE TOO MANY is an incident without its own history. At a particular moment, some months ago, a particular group of people got invited to enter a particular process. By deciding to accept the invitation they appeared, dragging with them, into the space, their own skills, desires, affinities and projections. They talked with the choreographer and to each other, they proposed certain gestures, situations and ways of working, they refused some other. They started dressing up, they walked repeatedly across the bare stage, they uttered words addressing empty audience, fell out of time and away from each other and came back together. They danced. Performative frame was generated not by any singular intention, conceptual articulation or personal phantasy, but by an intense and unpredictable interaction and friction between MANY incongruent substances. TOO MANY.
So yes, indeed, WE ARE TOO MANY, but the question persist - too many for what? In the actual encounter with the audience, with innumerable eyes of all those who do not know any of the above, we will have to find provisional answer to this uncomfortably question. And by confronting the dilemma together with spectators, implicating strangers in our own "meaningless" multitude, we will, hopefully discover content and form, not only for this performance, but for manyperformances to come. Because, in a world made of accidental and fleeting encounters, TOO MANY IS NEVER ENOUGH.
It is a deliberate decision of Dalija Aćin to enter a production of this performance without preconceived thematic framework. Instead of making a piece ABOUT something/anything she shifted her attention and interest toward the personalities of people she have invited to step in, not because these people are particular kind of performers (none of them is) but because they are particular kind of human beings. As if this is not complicated enough, she also chose a people that are apart from being extraordinary personalities, also, very well known makers themselves, of her own generation – theatre directors, dramaturge, playwright and a queer activist.
Igor Dobričić
