Trevoga

11 3 8 7 fills the eyes with sophisticated imagery, but the packaging is hollow. Behind the glittering appearance of fictitious avatars lurks a disquieting atmosphere that one can barely ever get a hold of. As if wandering through an abandoned mall alone, pursued by the shiver of a cold, artificial absence. Trevoga, together with electronic music producer Damyst, develops a bleak vision of human bodies in media-digital worlds. 11 3 8 7 is inspired by never-ending fantasies we fabricate online, and by their contradictory relation to an increasingly hostile reality. The piece leads virtual depictions of ‘real’ human interaction far into the unknown – akin to an AI that distorts content on request.

Trevoga is a dance collective from Amsterdam, comprised of Neda Ruzheva (BG, 1999), Antonina Pushkareva (RU, 2000), and Erikas Žilaitis (LT, 1999) – graduates of Amsterdam’s University of the Arts. All three are united by the experience of growing up in the hazy sociopolitical context of post-Soviet reconstruction – between the brutally enforced moral imperatives of a spectral dictatorship and the numbing hedonism of a reborn consumerist dream. This ambivalence is at the heart of Trevoga’s works in which shrill tropes from popular media and highbrow culture go hand in hand with a profane sentiment of distress. By playing with genres, register, and symbols with blatant incoherence, the trio looks upon their bodies as symptoms of their numerous addictions, viewing the stage as a means to untangle their many dissonant processes and contradictory forces.