All that jazz

How do you imagine a place like ZsaZsaLand?
As I understand it, there is money everywhere and people shimmy ebulliently, wave the ZsaZsarian flag, smell vibrant flowers and bounce off each other in midair as part of their folkloric tradition. The ZsaZsarian Madonna is tended by special gardeners except when she is taken out for a procession. It is very beautiful, but something is not quite right. There are some bones and disease and decay, but it really is a paradise. ZsaZsaLand is a performance and a republic—a lost society; a bad dream; a distant future; an alchemy machine; a psychic landfill of kitsch, cultures, music, strange rituals and YouTube videos. It’s my way of excavating our present.

This was inspired by your time in Serbia. What were you looking for and what did you find?
I had been listening to and using Roma [Gypsy] music in my work for many years and wanted to go live with Roma musicians to hear and learn it from the source. So I went to the Amala Summer School in Valjevo and studied Roma dancing and singing. The dance lessons were in a dark room with the shutters closed because my teacher’s husband didn’t want her to be seen dancing in public. In that room, she lectured me about her brand of feminism and taught me to shimmy.

How did that influence the piece?
I could see all these connections between postmodern urban artists and the Roma—nomadic and politically marginalized, at odds with the dominant culture yet artistically swallowing parts of it, adapting, squatting, reinventing themselves. Initially, I thought maybe the piece was about the Roma—their dancing, their marginalization and their traditions. Well, it’s not. I mean, my experience in Valjevo is certainly a part of the work. But as the piece grows, I see it more and more as about commercialism, overload, consumption, cannibalism, packaging and product. The shaking is part of the frenzy. But the frenzy is larger than the shaking.

Could you describe the environment you’ve created?
I have been working with Joro de Boro [DJ Joro-Boro]. We have been talking about the alchemy of directing people’s experiences, choreographing the energy in the space—things that DJs do that I find very similar to my own choreographic approach. As a result, the environment is part dance performance, part club, part visual installation. There is something that happens in the space—you can witness it or not. I think of the environment as a container for that. There is a kind of shrine of contemporary fetishes: Technicolor vines, fake money, caution tape, toy soldiers and wax. I have been dipping everything in wax, including myself. What’s important to me is that people are in the environment with us, not outside of it—and that they are part of the excavation too.

Jill Sigman presents ZsaZsaLand at Office Ops Fri 6–Sun 8, Feb 13–15 and 20–22.

See more in Dance >>