“Paradise Gone” at La Mama
Marcus David
October 2024
Ivo Dimchev needs our help and the stakes could not be any higher. What is at stake, you might ask…well, nothing short of a grammy award. Yes, thats right, Ivo is going for the Grammy and he will get one. How do I know, well, a mysterious clairvoyant told him so, therefore it must be true, but wait, there is just one hitch…due to his exceptionally poor judgement Ivo himself is not allowed to choose the songs for the next album, tasking us, the audience, to rate 17 unreleased songs that he masterfully and generously performs for us for only two nights in a new piece titled Paradise Gone at La Mama, September 27 to September 28. The songs with the highest ratings make it to the album, so let the games begin!
During the covid lockdown Ivo performed hundreds of small concerts in private homes around Bulgaria, where much of the material in Paradise Gone was performed. It is hard not to imagine all the strange places and odd circumstances that these numbers have been through before hitting the stage at La Mama. The drama and emotional intensity Ivo brings to each song adds to the mystery of this cracked actor and the journey of his music. The delivery is polished and shines with soul, falsetto, and style.
The banter between songs is playful and disturbed, as the audience rates the music in real time, exposing the artist to humbling and humiliating critiques. For the record, I rated each song with high marks, which probably makes my judgement pretty useless, but there were other members of the audience who were far less generous which made for more fun.
Ivo Dimchev is a theatre maker, choreographer, visual artist, singer-songwriter, and queer activist from Bulgaria. His work is an extreme and colorful mix of performance art, dance, theater, music, painting, and photography. He is the author of more than 40 stage performances and has received numerous international awards for dance and theater. Most of his stage performances are included in his book Stage Works 2002-2016. He has also written more than 100 original songs all included in his Songbook.
His work has been presented throughout Europe, South and North America, and Asia. During the Covid pandemic Dimchev performed more than 400 private concerts in people’s homes in Bulgaria, Istanbul, New York, and Los Angeles. The New Yorker covered these performances in a profile on Dimchev titled The Extravagant Exuberance of Ivo Dimchev.
Dimchev is the founder and director of Bulgaria’s Humarts Foundation. In 2009, after doing his master’s studies on performing arts at Dasarts Academy in Amsterdam, he opened Volksroom in Brussels, a performance space that presents young international artists. In 2014, he opened MOZEI in Sofia, Bulgaria, as an independent space for presenting contemporary art and music. In addition to his artistic work, Dimchev gives master classes at the National Theater Academy (Budapest), the Royal Dance Conservatorium of Belgium (Antwerp), Hochschule der Künste (Bern), Amsterdam University of the Arts, and DanceWeb (Vienna), among others.”
For information on upcoming performances at La Mama →
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