“The new work attacks not only the artists themselves, but also, brilliantly, the funding and political conditions that help to shape how a work becomes realized in today’s cultural climate. The show depicts a collaboration between choreographer extraordinaire Piotr Splendowsky, a native of the fictional state Tut, and his technician Hugo Vats in the making of an ambitious work for 40 Tutians singers and dancers that celebrates and promotes their nation’s endangered folk arts.
Splendowsky’s fictional biography is full of vacuities common to performing artists’ resumes, with vague, and grandiose references to his extensive experience and celebrated collaborators. It also reveals how Splendowsky’s early studies in Tut’s local folk dances were perspicaciously followed by studies in the economics and communication and cultural exchange, which he has put to use bringing his company on a tour. His largescale production promoting Tut’s traditional folk songs and dances is funded by various fictional media and educational organizations, including the ghastly sounding Tut Ministry of Tradition and Local Culture, neatly highlighting the commercial conditions under which arts events must function.
As Tut shamelessly bottles itself for the tourist market in the name of cultural preservation, it also plays a shrewd contemporary political game.
When DEJA DONNE is on stage, however we can be sure of only one thing – that the production will undermine and deconstruct itself with superb irony and likely turn into a delightful disaster.”
Lizzy Le Quesne,, The Prague Post