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Dance
nytheatre.com
reviewed TRAPPED as
part of the FringeNYC festival
and made it the pick of the day,
Saturday, August 16, 2003:
"A young girl runs up and down a
hallway, screaming, knocking,
pounding, and begging to get into many
doors, all of which contain something
unique, grotesque, fantastical, or
even beautiful within. A heartbeat of
music streams out so loudly from the
speakers that, as an audience member,
it's difficult to distinguish if the
rhythm is in your head, part of the
piece, or even exists. In a film, the
graceful body of the girl levitates
from shot to shot on a white canvas
and then one of the doors opens...
These are just some of the images racing through your head after
seeing Trapped, conceived, directed, and performed by the amazing
Ksenia Vidyaykina. There's just so much to take in. How is it possible
that on a clear stage, with only a white canvas backdrop, a red scarf
hanging from above, and simple music, that a dancer/performer can fill
up a space so entirely? Ksenia does. Simply put: Ksenia knows exactly
what she's doing. The fact that this entire piece (costumes, music,
video, set, direction, etc.) was created and woven out of the mind of
one person leaves the audience without any room for doubt that this is
a complete performance. Nothing could be added, and nothing could be
changed. It's borderline
perfection.
Ksenia offers a new way to look at pre-existing elements of your
world, as she portrays a stripper who removes too much, a mermaid who
cuts through to the essentials of who she is, a singer who transcends
the song, a black widow who begs for sustenance....and all of them
seen through the eyes of a young girl. See this show. Put yourself in
Ksenia's world for an hour, and then try to see things the way you
used to: it may be hard to turn
back. You are trapped." (Sarah
Wolfman-Robichaud, nytheatre.com)
offfoffoff.com (Lori Ortiz) called TRAPPED
"[...] a singular vision, a
feminist tragedy, a surreal nightmare,
a succession of predicaments, a
cocktail of perversities, washed down
with a chaser of charm",
concluding that "Vidyaykina looks at the double-edged sword that is pleasure and pain. She seems to ask, what part can we play in an unkind world? Though one can crave the healing power of a perfect divertissement, Vidyaykina's creation serves up the raw scenes that hit home". Read the
full review here.
Wendy Perron wrote in
DANCE MAGAZINE, November 2003:
"FRINGE MERMAID - She writhed through a sinuous dance worthy of Salome and stripped down to skimpy bits of chiffon. Then she peeled from her leg a long skinlike patch, leaving tracks of blood. This was the opening scene in Ksenia Vidyaykina's solo performance work TRAPPED, which also included a mermaid act in a built-up dress that exuded white fluid from the breasts and a dead fish from the belly. And as a black widow sprouting rubber antennae, she kissed a guy sitting in the front row, then drooled fake blood. One of the few dance entries in the sprawling New York International Fringe Festival in August, TRAPPED revealed Vidyaykina as a fascinating girl/woman with sensuous, spiraling arms and sad, fevered, trapped eyes."
The
The Village Voice (Meital Waibsnaider) wrote on September 24, 2003:
"TRAPPED lured us to a dark, painful place where milk oozed from gashed nipples, a dead fish was removed from a mermaid's pregnant tummy, and a sliver of bloody thigh-skin was peeled in an act of exhibitionism and self-mutilation. Vidyaykina possesses hypnotic physical and directorial powers, and impressively held forth in vignettes featuring six troubled souls. Among them were a dejected flapper-era negligee-and-skin stripper, and a blood-drooling black spider who climbed the set and the audience with help from an endless red cloth. Vidyaykina must understand how it feels to be locked in a broom closet for years on end. Each fragmented word, gesture, and video-clip satisfyingly coalesced in a timeless, chilling portrait of female depravity and isolation."
Various national and international
publications picked up this story and picture (PDF) by Amy Westfeldt for Associated Press.
The New York Times wrote a
review
of the Cathy Weis production Electric
Haiku at DTW, on December 02, 2002, calling Ksenia
Vidyaykina's "simple but
ravishing solo... the highlight of the
piece". (Jennifer Dunning,
The New York Times)
Deborah Jowitt for The Village Voice
about Electric Haiku, December 04,
2002
Barbez
Daria Vaisman wrote in the NY Press about Barbez at
the Knitting Factory, December 14,
2001, "I'm mostly into it,
thinking, pretty good, pretty good,
until their singer, the spectacular
Ksenia Vidyaykina, comes onstage and
transforms the band to greatness
[...] Her persona's fascinating and
bizarre, and only describable by
association [...] I'd assumed she was
doped-up or a Daniel Johnston-type you
watch the way you watch an accident,
but she was just performing".
Marina Rubin for YCROP
about Barbez at Tonic, October 11: " To make the long story short: the band is so good- they can smoke whatever and whenever they want".
2002
maximum-ink
about the second Barbez CD, July 2002
KindaMusik
(Dutch online magazine) about the Barbez CD, December 01, 2002
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