Springback Members can watch the video here: springbackmagazine.com/members/be-there/mate-meszaros-mechanics-of-distance

Máté Mészáros’s Mechanics of Distance is designed for adaptation to different non-theatre sites, its core elements being three dancers and a musician, an audience who can wander around, and a series of distinct scenes that spread far and wide across the site.

Here, it is the gardens of Ljubljana’s Tivoli Castle. Mészáros, Jenna Jalonen and Zsófia Tamara Vadas open the proceedings with gateswinging arms signalling direction and distance. Mészáros and Jalonen perch a duet of tick-tocking counterbalances upon a stairwall, while Vadas flings herself into a frenzied drum-dance on a distant lawn. There’s wet-hair flinging to The Rolling Stones, a slow tangle of bodies on a stone landing, a caber roll down a slope.

The performance itself is but one aspect of ‘the piece’. The rest comes from this postcard-perfect place, the baking blue day, the beguiling shifts of perspective and focus, the high flight of birds and the slow mingling of people. Lovely.