“Delhi Dance” by Ivan Vyrypaev

“Delhi Dance” – Liberation’s Laughter
The Delhi Dance (2010) is a seven-piece theatre text in which the same people meet in the exact same place – a visitor’s room in a hospital. These are seven stories about witnessing a dance born out of the world’s pain. A dance that should not be watched, but listened to.
In each of these stories, someone loses a loved one, but to their own surprise, they feel nothing. After each movement, after each action, we understand: pain does not exist. It is a reflection, a play of the mind, shadows of clouds on water. Death is not destructive for, as Socrates says, it is a dream without dreams. What remains is the only reality: love – not as a feeling, but as an essence, as the pulse of the universe.
Ivan Vyrypaev, born in 1974 in Irkutsk and currently living in Poland, is one of the five most prominent contemporary playwrights in Europe. Founder of Teatr.doc, he is one of the leading figures of Russia’s new wave of experimental dramaturgy. To him, theatre does not need false pathos, but honest conversation.
“We are moving towards a new type of communication,” Vyrypaev says. “I’d call it communication between energies and consciousnesses. The spectator comes to the theatre because they need dialogue, they need live feedback…”
And when we understand this, when we stop being afraid, expecting, clinging, then we can laugh – because we are free.