Mephisto Waltz: Inside a black container a video displays red graphic fractals. The man, dressed as bride, reads out a text about scientific relevances between sound and image. In the courtyard, the woman sits at a plastic-wrapped table with 6 glasses, tempting to memorize fragments of Faust’s final monologue. The man comes to sit at another table, a nurse takes off blood from his veins and fills it into 6 glasses. The violinist plays fragments of Liszt’s Mephisto Waltz #1, and fills the woman’s glasses with white and golden liquid. The woman drinks the glasses, spilling the liquids onto herself. She slips under the table cloth, over the table and in front of it. With each drink filled by the Mephistophelean violinist, her situation gets more slippery, and between her fragmented recitals she continuously slips, slams on the floor, stands up again. The man writes with his blood a phrase on the table cloth. He burns a book and drinks a glass of black liquid. He approaches the woman and by kissing her, lets the black liquid flow onto her. They drink two glasses of his blood. They start a desperate, slippery dance on the spilled liquids, while the violinist is playing the entire Mephisto Waltz.

* The performance is based on the version Faust. Ein Gedicht by Nikolaus Lenau from 1836. The intensively corporal actions are accompanied by Mephisto Waltz #1 by Franz Liszt (1859), played in an adaption for violin by German violinist Stephan Knies. Serbian scientist Vedran Vucic created a unique design pattern directly out of the musical composition.

* Violin: Stephan Knies
* Graphic translation of Liszt’s musical composition into fractals: Vedran Vucic (Omen teatar, Belgrade)

1. *Photos: Eleonora Mayerle, Matilde Sambo, Biagio Ciraldo
   

* Duration: 45 Minutes

* Spazio Thetis, Venice, Italy.

September 2011.

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