I escaped over the French-German border in 1987 on a sunny autumn Sunday without any documents, in the cemetery of Saarbrucken. When I arrived in Paris, I gave myself up and was imprisoned instantly. Journalists helped me get out of jail. I visited the nuns for free food, I was wandering and slept on the street for months, while I was singing Villon’s ballads to myself. These ballads gave me a lot, gave me everything. My life. Then years later, when I was living in Orléans, I heard that Villon had been imprisoned there. I lived right next to the cellarprison of a castle where Villon almost died and when I looked at the prison (which is a museum now) from above, I had a funny feeling. The state of emptiness and fate. The state of real beauty and goodness. Real sense and importance behind everything. A lady from the cabinet of the French president Mitterand saw our performance in the Theatre de la Ville and I received the necessary papers. The doors which were closed up until then suddenly opened. This feeling of emptiness again. Of being left behind.  Have the events of my life gone beyond themselves? Have they gone beyond me?  

I had a conversation with Ottó Tolnai around 2000 at Josef Nadj’s place in Orléans about the Yugoslavian wars. We discussed what it meant to escape from a country, leave everything behind – what you had been working for, friends, lovers, pretty streets, home, even our own language. (I think Tolnai stayed because of this latter one, which is natural for a writer.)
Ottó said that escaping is not that hard, it is much harder to stay, and you have to stay whatever happens. I think both are hard, and now after so many years I think escaping and staying are the same.

There are four places in the performance which played an important role in my life: the prison cell, the monastic cell, the psychiatric ward and the servant’s room in Paris. These rooms are always the same, only their colour, atmosphere, the people and the events happening in them are different. They are basically the same and symbolize emptiness. The form is the emptiness, the emptiness is the form. My own cell. And the outer world becomes intimate. I am eventually in my own cell. When something happens, a hole is created and a step is taken to make this world more complete. Every step taken leaves a mark in the empty space. These steps are the shadows that fall between the things. As T.S. Eliot says: between the idea and the reality, between the motion and the act, falls the shadow. Between the conception and the creation, between the emotion and the response, falls the shadow, between the desire and the spasm, between the potency and the existence, between the essence and the descent falls the shadow.
(Györk Szakonyi)

choreographed-performed by: Györk Szakonyi
music: István Grencsó
vocals: György Kozma
space: Tamás Vati
video: Gábor Hörcher
assistant: Zsolt Unoka
producer: Marcell Iványi

Supported by: NKA Táncművészeti Szakmai Kollégium, KraatsFilm
Co-production partner: MASZK Egyesület (Szeged)

The performance is managed and supported by MASZK Association.

© 2010, KraatsFilm