Jana Jacuka: Ha

Jana Jacuka’s newest piece has been long awaited – she’s one of the most spotlighted Latvian contemporary dance artists, and a recent graduate of the prestigious DAS Theatre. As with her previous work, Ha is personal but not only that – it’s a masterful blend of concept, alien-like vocal skills, clever aesthetics, and Jacuka’s own shape-shifting stage presence.

Ha plays on double meanings. Its main theme is laughter – not as a sign of enjoyment, but quite the opposite: a gesture that helps cope with social pressure, creating a space to hide. As the programme notes put it, ‘A friend of a friend put a hand around me, ha, I’m feeling insecure but I just went hahahaha.’ While dance often starts from the idea that the body does not lie, Jacuka approaches from the opposite angle: the body’s ability to fake.

At the centre of the performance are Jacuka’s vocal skills – her voice, embodied in repeated ‘ha’s, bounces back from the empty walls of auditorium and begins a 50-minute journey. Voice and body move like waves, shifting from making the audience laugh at mundane yet terrifying and paralysing moments, such as the instant you realise you’ve called the wrong number, to drawing us into watching her delving deeper and more violently into herself. Her ‘ha’ travels from her mouth to her throat and chest; it’s a hiccup, a breath of feelings trapped inside. Then it becomes a reflex of vomit, and she transforms into a blonde alien in black leather pants.

This idea is enriched by a minimalistic white box set design that shifts from neutrality to resembling a doctor’s office, where Jacuka’s body becomes depersonalised, sterilised, and metaphorically butchered. Yet the space offers even more, as its meanings begin to quietly flirt with the aesthetics of masochism, though without any physical additions: this new layer is created entirely through Jacuka as the focal point of the performance.

The performance has no climax – just an exhale and a smile as Jacuka returns from a journey, looking at the audience almost shyly. It’s a viscous, inescapable loop of constant return that offers no neat ending or closure and can sometimes feel distancing; but the mastery of Ha lingers in the mind long afterwards. ●