Have you ever wondered what socks do when no one’s looking?
Yes, you’ve read that right. Socks. Ordinary socks for everyday wear, those that go with business suits, and the no-show socks that you wear with ballet flats in the spring. Do they just sit quietly in drawers, rolled neatly into balls by human hands?
As it turns out, they don’t.
Many years of observations have shown that socks are extremely intelligent. You’ve surely experienced this: all of a sudden, you discover a hole in one of your socks, or you put on a perfectly clean sock only to find brownish stains on its bottom. Or, the worst of all you find a small bead or another tiny yet annoying object that got stuck in the seams of your sock (or in its creases, if you wear seamless socks) and jabs your foot every time you take a step. Also, there are known cases of both matching and mismatched socks being found in completely unexpected places, for example in fridges or vacuum cleaners, under beds, or even lying in plain sight in the middle of the floor.
All this offers tangible proof that socks have a life of their own. They typically crawl out of drawers at night, because they can see in the dark almost as well as cats. Yes, socks have eyes, which are hidden in their seams (or in the creases of seamless socks). During their nighttime forays, socks eat up the crumbs left on plates or engage in unequal fights with the dust bunnies that live under the bed, often ending up with injuries that range from frayed edges to holes. Sometimes they get so carried away that they forget to return to their drawers before dawn breaks and are left frozen in place, turning to stone in sunlight, like Tolkien’s trolls.
Although socks live in groups called herds, they rarely form pairs.
Even if you pair them up, they often end up being single after you give them a bath in the washing machine. In desperation, usually when you’re in great hurry, you may arrange a marriage of two random socks. Unfortunately, such arranged marriages are rarely durable. Two socks will never form a lasting relationship unless they are a perfect color match.
I proudly present to you some of the most typical behaviors of socks that I’ve spotted in my attic.
Socks and their behaviors are portrayed by two talented dancers: Wiktoria Reszka and Alexey Torgunakov. You’ve already met Wiktoria, so now it’s time to introduce Alexey.
Alexey Torgunakov graduated from the Moscow State Academy of Choreography and began his career as a dancer at the Russian Bolshoi Theater. He was also a member of the Provincial Dances Theater in Yekaterinburg, Russia. He has worked with such artists as Angelin Preljocaj, Anna Piotrowska, Ivgi & Greben, Cecilia Moisio, Tatiana Baganova, Alexei Ratmansky, Jiří Kylián, Roland Petit, Yuri Grigorovich, and Natalia Shirokova. Since 2014, he has been a cast member of the ROZBARK Theater in bytom, Poland. He won the International Dance Competition Hellas in Athens (2007). Together with Oleg Stepanov, he was nominated for the Russian theater award “Golden Mask” for choreography for the show “All that I can be” (2016) and for choreography for the show “Object in a distance” (2018). In his work, Alexey combines various disciplines of the arts, and he has collaborated with such visual artists as Natalie Doomco, Anna Trish, Vladislav Sedletsky, and Vladimir Glynin. He also creates his own artistic language based on video art, engaging in such projects as “p-layers,” “Ready To Change,” and “Liberation.” He made the video for the An On Bast show “Life Is a Dancer and You Are the Dance.” He collaborated with The Bill Concept Store in Poznań, Poland. He has performed in Japan, South Korea, the United Arab Emirates, China, the United States, Australia, Canada, France, England, Italy, Spain, Germany, Belgium, the Netherlands, Greece, Luxembourg, Slovenia, Ukraine, Belarus, and Hungary. He has taught workshops and lessons mainly in contemporary dance, ballet, and elements of improvisation in Poland and abroad.
http://www.teatrrozbark.pl/alexey-torgunakov,257
Dorota Pietrzyk was responsible for the look of the socks, once again putting my costume ideas into practice. The behind-the-scenes video from the photo shoot was made by the always reliable StanB.
Backstage:
This article has been reehived (published in Polish a year ago)
A huge thank you to Anna Król for her help with translating this article into English.