Bitef

botina, skica i senki. Crni radavi preobražavaju taj apstraktni materija! sa željom da istraže fizičku i labavu ravnotežu izmedu onoga što kontroliše i kontrolisanog, govomog i cutljivog, obdarenog vidom i slepog. □

Station House Opera Black Works On a black floor covered with a sprinkling of white flour, Black Works pits the traditional black marks of language, words written on paper, against another universal set of black marks - the visual world of drawings, footprints, tracings, impressions of bodies, body outlines, scratches, sketches and shadows. It transforms these abstract materials to explore a physical and unstable balance between the controlling and the controlled, the verbal and the silent, the sighted and the blind. Station House Opera was founded in 1980 since when it has developed from its origins as a performance art company to its current position as a theatre company renowned in Europe and the USA for its unique physical and visual style, combining in its view of urban life the funny, the spectacular, the obsessional and the ingenious. The work varies widely in look, scale and location, from the studio theatre to the twenty-storey high outside event, but it retains throughout a use of spectacle to explore the intimate relationship between people and the environment they inhabit. It is work without parallel in Britain today, combining serious, non-narrative themes with room for simple enjoyment. It has a challenging accessibility, and occupies a political as wel as artistic context. Since their formation in 1981 Station House Opera have toured some 20 different projects in Britain and worldwide, In recent years their production Cuckoo toured throughout Europe. The company established a reputation for their architectural per-

formances with breeze blocks. The first, a Split Second of Paradise, was commissioned by the Midland Group Nottingham in 1985 and is still being performed in Europe. In 1988 the company presented Piranesi in New York at the First New York International Festival of the Arts, commissioned by Creative Time for the Brooklyn Bridge Anchorage. These two projects paved the way for the most spectacular of the three, The Bastille Dances, created with 8000 breeze blocks, which premiered

Black Works A black floor sprinkled with a rain of flour creates the opportunity to labour - lots of obsessive sweeping and the chance to draw. The two activities interlock (when does swe eping become art?), and interfere with one another - one person’s design destroys another’s masterpiece. It’s a brilliant idea that allows Station House Opera to speculate lightheartedly on the relationship between creative and mindless action, and between self-motivated and directed activity. Instructions issue from headphones to which the performers respond in desultory fashion - perhaps because there is not enough at stake. Nothing too problematic - embarrassing, difficult, bizarre or obscene - is required of them, so no absurd situations arise, nor are rebellions or battles of conscience generated. The most compelling moments of a rather too polite show are the synchronised sequences of pouring, drinking and exchanging cups, which require perfect timing amongst three apparently disinterested parties. Missing on the first night was the element of play. With the whole floor as a canvas, wonderful pictures could be created for the performers to step into - worlds governed by different sets of rules. Photographs show drawings of a horse, a table and chandelier and someone cleaning the windows of an imaginary car - maybe more ebullient flights of fantasy are in store. □ Sarah Kent (Time Oui )

in France during Bicentenary Year and then was seen on London's South Bank, Amsterdam, Salzburg and Barcelona. In 1990 Station House Opera created two more site specific pieces, one for the Melbourne International Festival and the other for the UK 90 Festival in Tokyo, Black Works is the company’s most recent project. It is commissioned with five venues in London, Zurich, Granada, New York and Amsterdam, and will tour in Britain, Europe, the USA and Canada during 1991. □