Slava’s SnowShow Searching For The Divine Child
AbstractThe performance SnowShow, created by Russian artist Slava Polunin, had its premiere in Moscow in October 1993. It won Drama Desk Award for Unique Theatrical Experience and was nominated at Tony Award for Best Special Theatrical Event. Currently, this performance-event has world tours periodically.The contemporary art can be characterized by the hybridization of the expression forms, by the impressive blend of antagonistic signs and concepts. SnowShow consists of at least two spectacular forms: theater and clownery. There can be observed many overall compositional elements specific to clownery (the characters’ costumes, the expression of the relationships, the artist / audience ratio, the construction of the sequences). Likewise, the dramatization of the theme, the philosophical conceptualization, and the characters’ existence, the presence of various emotions, the placement of laughter and other clown-related motifs in the background are among the aspects indicating the fundamentally dramatic structure of the performance. The initially perceived individual anxiety and the singular nature get general, multiplied proportions. SnowShow is, perhaps, a recontextualization of Vladimir and Estragon in Samuel Beckett’s Waiting for Godot.
