Brighter

“What stays familiar and alive inside us?” wonders the choreographer Myrto Grapsa. In her new work – "Brighter" – she reframes a series of questions concerning pain, pleasure and happiness.

Despite the light inherent in its title, the work invites audiences to dive deep into the darkness of desire, not in order to produce a simplified dualistic interpretation of reality – the interchange of darkness and light – but rather to direct our attention towards a reconciliation with what is core to humanity: the unknown.

Four gifted dancers – the choreographer herself among them – in an unusual stage environment attempt to reveal all that remains hidden, to articulate unexplored aspects of the body through movement. For the body is, in any case, a blank page whose contents have yet to be written.

The triptych that is pain, happiness and pleasure seems to thread throughout the course of art history; from the time of mythological interpretations of the world, through to the explosive “Sturm und Drang” (literally “storm and stress”) of Romanticism, down to more contemporary post-human approaches, this triptych offers us ways in which to contemplate the individual and the distinct boundaries of subjective experience. Whether fleeting or longer-lasting, pain, happiness and pleasure can lead us closer to an understanding of the very nature of humankind, bringing to light the deepest recesses of existence.

An important part of artistic creation concerns the so-called transformation of trauma, the desire felt by individuals to drive difficult and painful experiences towards more positive emotional responses. In her book The Story of Pain: From Prayer to Painkillers, Joanna Bourke at one point describes the healing effects of voicing the story of our pain, of sharing our suffering as a kind of compassion, a form of familiarization with the Other. Art, in contrast to painkillers, remains a vibrant space in which these painful and traumatic stories can be given voice.

In 1838, Gustave Flaubert writes in his Memoirs of a Madman: “It (one of the protagonist’s childhood memories) is a pleasure which has been long lost to me, for now my heart is arid and the tears have run dry. But woe betide the men who made me corrupt and evil, for I was once good and pure! Woe betide that heartless society which dries up and withers all that rises up towards the light of poetry and the heart.” (Translated by Andrew Brown – London: Hesperus Press, 2002)