Bulgarian choreographer and performer Iskra Prodanova continues to captivate audiences with her latest work Reflections. This work deals with the concept of oscillation, exploring both its physical manifestations and its metaphysical implications. Prodanova describes the work as a choreographic exploration inspired by oscillation, likening it to a poem or chorus that moves forward and backward, outward and inward, creating relationships through resonance and dissonance in different contexts.

The concept of the middle or in-between, liminal space has preoccupied the author for quite some time. What happens in this in-between space? As Deleuze and Guattari write in A Thousand Plateaus – Capitalism and Schizophrenia, “The middle is by no means an average; on the contrary, things gather momentum there. Between things does not mean a localized relation that passes from one thing to another and back again, but a perpendicular direction, a transverse movement that sweeps one thing and another, a stream without beginning or end that undermines its banks and gains speed in the middle.”

Research based on oscillations began in 2022 when Iskra Prodanova launched the long-term research project “Practices for Altered States”, which includes the practice “Pendulation”. The practice is apparently simple, with strong effects on both body and mind. It is based on the principle of oscillation, with two steps forward and one backward to cover a distance of about one kilometer in an hour, hour and a half, with the hands in a fixed position, the eyes not moving, and the breathing synchronized with the steps.

The choreographic work deepens the exploration, based on Euclid’s principle of oscillation and rhythm and plane geometry, and somehow reflects inner states, the eternal search, and the attempt to position the self in relation to the other. He plays with “lines of articulation or segmentation; movements of deterritorialization and destratification, trying to leave space for reading between different layers and territories – between out and in, arrival and return.

On the other hand, the work also reflects the human condition (individual or collective) set in the context of capitalism – no brakes, a repeating cycle, a centrifuge. We act as little machines that make up the big machine, and I wonder what the interrelationship of these individual or collective machines – organisms, with the machine of war, for example, or the machine of love, the machine of revolution, etc., and the abstract machine that sweeps them away.

Prodanova’s dedication to exploring complex themes through movement and her commitment to promoting contemporary dance in Bulgaria continue to establish her as a significant figure in the performing arts community. Her work not only challenges audiences but invites them to engage deeply with the nuanced interplay of physics and philosophy.