Tchelet Pearl Weisstub

Performance, dance, organ, 2018, 15 min

There is an undeniable pleasure that golden chandeliers offer. The woman standing beneath one takes off her coat while she tells us that she has to choose between being cold or fashionable. A traditional Dutch dilemma. After speaking about the rotation of the earth, using the chandelier as the sun, she takes out her phone and calls the organ player, “We are ready now.” At the same time, the dervish dancer begins rotating around his axe, seemingly effortlessly, beneath the chandelier sun.

Round and round and round and round
and round and round and round and round.

I want it to go on
and on and on
and on and on
and on and on and on and on

When the organ player stops playing only the slight steps of the dancer remain audible, as if everything else is holding its breath. Sometimes repetition of ritual can be as dull as my childhood memory of Sunday sermons, sometimes it contains swooshing twirling steps and an eternally whirling skirt, hallucinating us into a temporary suspension of our burning questions and engaging our senses in ways that are bewildering.

The silence is bursting.

Shown at L&F The Revival at Oude Kerk (21–12–2018)