If you’ve never worked with a laser-focused choreographer (all of them?), I can thoroughly recommend it. It’s intense. And I’m only crew: the dancers on stage have to work their arses off. Every single show. Of all the laser-focused choreographers, Dunja is the ultimate Death Star argon laser, I reckon.
She sees and hears every detail. And every detail gets corrected. God help you if you’re daydreaming and miss something that could be better. Dunja is already a few steps ahead. Is that intense? Yes. Does it produce something beautiful? Also yes.
On FOLK by choreographer Dunja Jocić, I cover FOH sound for head technician Seb Jongejans when he’s unavailable. So far I’ve done Amsterdam at the Stadsschouwburg, Rotterdam at TR25, Delft and Hoofddorp. The tour is still running, with more dates to come.
When I met Dunja, I had this feeling we’d lived in the same tribe somewhere in the distant past. That fearless gaze, the humour, her laughter and seriousness all at once. It feels very close, and very special. Is she like that with everyone, or just me?
Twelve outputs and Corten steel
FOLK has an extremely demanding set. Heavy, rusty Corten steel plates that we have to hang at different heights and in different combinations in every theatre. It takes time. Time I can’t spend setting up, patching, testing and listening to our immersive sound system: sound around the audience, with twelve separate outputs.
So you start pretty much every show playing catch-up. All twelve outputs still need connecting and listening to, in yet another room.
The glitch
During one performance, I heard an audio glitch that nobody had heard before. I knew straight away: we’ll be talking about this. For a second I wondered whether the house DSP, the theatre’s digital audio processor, could be responsible. I worked through that possibility in my head and decided it was unlikely.
When I said that out loud, I saw Dunja relax. Not because we were any closer to a solution, but because we’d reached the same conclusion.
The glitch remains unexplained. We suspect the link with QLab, the software we use to play back the cues. A suspicion, no confirmed cause yet.
A seat in the audience
I’ve also seen FOLK as a visitor. Seb was mixing; I was in the audience. The opening scenes are clubby, with a hard Berlin techno beat. Properly driving. I went in expecting this to be right up my street, and it was.
But after the club, the piece turns inward. I expected my attention to drift a little at that point. The opposite happened. As the beats receded, the choreography grew in equal measure. Right in front of me, the dancers pushed themselves to the limit. Incredibly complex moves, up on their toes, contorted and angular, held still, intensely technical. Breathtaking.