Dance International Glasgow

Anna Krzystek: Untitled #0.5

Tramway, Glasgow

Mary Brennan

four stars

THERE has always been an intriguingly enigmatic element in Anna Krzystek’s work, a pathway of open-ended possibilities that allows audiences to pursue their own thoughts about the transience of images on-stage, how that space is re-defined by the arrival of objects, a performing presence or even the atmospheres suggested by a soundscore – and how such instances carry over into daily life. If there’s a resolutely intellectual complexity underpinning Krzystek’s choreographies, there’s humour too, in a fondness for quirky nuances that can catch you unawares and scatter your pre-conceptions of what you think you’re watching. Her current installation, in an upstairs room at Tramway, plays cunningly with all these strands.

Subtitled “Who, What and Where is Anna”, the piece operates across three monitors that simultaneously screen three very different films. The one on the left has varying close-ups of Krzystek’s face, the middle one focusses on a domestic interior – a hallway, with doors opening into other rooms – the third shows Krzystek, in her customary black, alongside a pale, bulky body-suit costume that she will, occasionally, inhabit. It’s up to you to choose how you view, but however long you spend watching, you’re unlikely to walk away with the questions mooted in the subtitle neatly resolved. That hallway, with its bookshelves: is it Kryzstek’s own flat? That stiff, almost sculptural costume, actually disguises and distorts Krzystek’s physicality, just as the face-mask in some of the close-ups blanks out emotions. Even when, by watching, you become familiar with the films you’re never sure if what’s on-screen is "actual" Anna. Untitled #0.5 is the start of a new series, based on the premise of Nothing – I’m curious already.

Runs until May 21; Mark Murphy’s VTOL rounds off Dance International Glasgow with Out of this World on Friday and Saturday.