A Fragile Negotiation | Andriy Povoznikov & Zoya Saganenko Choreography

Описание: “A Fragile Negotiation” is a delicate conversation between a human being and life itself. This duet is about learning to exist again when the ground beneath you has shifted.

Created by Ukrainian choreographers working beyond their homeland, the duet gently reflects on human resilience and the fragile process of integration into a new reality.

Two voices speak the same words, yet sound foreign to each other. They interrupt, overlap, insist: “A human cannot fly, yet he has wings”. The phrase returns like a quiet act of resistance. The man appears fractured, searching for support and the strength to endure. The woman stands both as another wounded person and as a life, society, the unfamiliar environment that tests, resists, and hesitates to embrace.

Their bodies begin apart, moving in different rhythms, negotiating distance and proximity. This is not a fight, but an attempt to understand. Every lift is a question of trust. Every separation redraws the terms of connection. They pass through collisions, pauses, fragile intimacy, and the fear of not being understood.

Gradually, resistance softens into listening. They begin to share breath. The wings remain invisible, yet undeniable, emerging not as escape but as the courage to stay, adapt, and find a common language in uncertainty. Perhaps he finds the source of energy in her. Perhaps she becomes for him not an opponent, but life itself, a force that both challenges and sustains.

Choreography and Dance: Zoya Saganenko and Andriy Povoznikov.
Music: “Darkest Thursday “ by Kjartan Abel
(a curated collection of Creative Commons CC BY-SA 4.0 license)
Videography: Maria Kalafatsi
Text: the poem “Kryla” by Lina Kostenko.
Poetry recitation: performed and recorded in Ukrainian by Zoya Saganenko and Andriy Povoznikov.

"It’s true that those who have wings need no ground.
If there’s no land, then let there be sky.
No field — yet freedom will remain.
No steam — and there will be clouds on high.

This may be the bird’s peculiar truth…
But what about a human’s fate?
They live upon the ground, can’t fly themselves —
Yet wings they have, and wings they innate.

Those wings are not of feathers, fluff, or down,
But formed of truth, of virtue’s faithful fire,
Of trust that roots in love and care profound,
Of constant striving that lifts hearts up higher.

Some soar on wings of faithful love’s embrace,
Some on the fire of endless yearning’s flame.
Some on devotion to their honest work,
Some on the generous care that bears no claim.

Some wings rise with a song or hopeful dream,
Some with the magic of a poem’s light.
Though humans seem not meant to fly at all —
They have these wings; they have them in their sight."

Special thanks to Cromot (Paris) for generously providing the creative space.