Photo: Christoffer Brekne

 

PuSh International Performing Arts Festival
All That Remains

When & Where January 23 and 24th, 2025; 7:30pm | SFU Woodward’s Goldcorp Centre for the Arts

Choreography and Direction Mirko Guido Sound Composer Fredrik Arsaeus Nauckhoff Light and Video Design ChristofferBrekne

Performers Elisa D’Amico, Zen Jefferson, Eliott Marmouset, RoosaTorma

Reviewer Nancie Ottem


PuSh International Performing Arts Festival is celebrating 20 years of bringing innovative and boundary pushing artistic expression to the stage. All That Remains is an opening performance for the 2025 festival. An appropriate piece to represent the mandate PuSh explores of offering works that challenge our assumptions and poke at our complacency.

All That Remains is the creation of Mirko Guido, a choreographer and dancer who has travelled the world to explore the culture of dance and in so doing expand his own artistic expression. The opening several minutes of All That Remains comprise the four performers at the front of the stage pulling at their facial features in an Edvard Munch impression. The stage behind the performers is littered with tarps, bubble wrap, coiled tubing, styrofoam pieces and wood. The lighting is dim. The whole impression in the opening minutes is of pain.

Guido is exploring the wounded inner self and how this affects the way we relate to the environment around us. He presents a very bleak outlook of humanity where isolation and separation from others is at the forefront. The stark stage with industrial looking props furthers the sense of inadequacy and resignation that is built into the theme of the piece. Sound, lighting and video enhancement keep the mood dark and hazy. All That Remains comes to its end with the performers constantly changing the position of the props, never content, suggesting futility in the purpose of their actions. An overall sense of hopelessness.PuSh International Performing Arts Festival runs until February 9th, 2025.
Reviewed by Nancie Ottem

© 2025 Nancie Ottem