Neti neti / neither this nor that: an exhibition and theatrical space where the audience is part of the ritual.
Amalia Fernández opens the new eszenAZ season premiering her latest work Neti Neti in the Basque Country. It is a long stage experience where the audience is part of an exploration that questions the wall between the spectator and the person on stage.
The choreographer and movement researcher’s latest productions range from conventional stage pieces such as Matrioshka, Kratimosha and El resistente y delicado hilo musical, to the exhibition format with Expografía Retrospectiva, presented as part of the last Azkuna Zentroa “Prototipoak. Biennial of New Artistic Forms”. In this sense, Neti Neti is another step forward in exploring the transitory possibilities of a stage event in relation to the audience. On this occasion, the artist reflects on dance as a subjective experience, social event, ritual, and exhibitionism.
Thus, over 4 hours and through a series of different sections, the audience interacts in a collective experience after a research process carried out by a choreographer who was originally a dancer and now creates sensations through abstraction, the unconscious and sensitivity”, according to Amalia Fernández, the artistic director and interpreter of the piece.
The term Neti neti comes from Hindustani and means something like “neither this nor that”. It is a method to approach the experience of the divine via negation, as something containing absolutely everything yet not specifically anything. The artist clarifies this work is “A cross between yoga and dance. It shows the audience how to enter a different state of consciousness through a state of conscience. It is more of a ritual as opposed to a spectacle.”
