Yesterday I sat on a cloud of fluff and thought to myself
“if I just could take this home with me,”
and felt like a child again.
So I took a golden thread and sewed all the memories together, carefully, so I wouldn’t forget anything. And then I sat on the soft blanket of echoes until I fell through it to the past.
In my artistic research I am interested in knitting as a feminine and feminist practice. Wool is a material whose qualities (warmth, softness) are often associated with nurturing and love; things that are largely considered feminine. From a historical perspective, knitting has long been seen as women’s work and has traditionally been very undervalued both in skilfulness and as cultural value. As a dance-artist I am interested to explore this art-craft dichotomy and the historical stereotype of femininity being a silent virgin who makes unnecessary crafts at home – whose products have been seen as an extension of her femininity, rather than as independent works that require skill and patience to make. For many women, handicrafts have been their means to leave their own mark in history – to make their stories visible. And as a female artist, I want to continue the life of these stories.
In Pattern no. 54 I visit my own past through recollections of my grandmother, the person I connect with knitting. Memories are translated, reworked, stitched together to a new image. Through meditative repetition the borders between reality and imagination are getting blurred, creating a space and time for connection through love and vulnerability.
Choreography, text & performance: Vilja Mihalovsky
Sound: Dick Mihalovsky
Technical help: David Becker
Production: Vilja Mihalovsky, AdBK Nürnberg
Premiere: 10.7.2024, AdBK Nürnberg
Duration: 30min