The war is over, but a soldier’s body refuses to forget.
Daria Titova
Location: Mezrab
- GENRE: Dance, Mime, Theatre
- THEME: Mental Health, Speaking Bodies, Systems under pressure, Voicing the Unvoiced
- LANGUAGE: English
- ACCESSIBILITY: Assistance dogs welcome, Genderneutral toilets, Toilet for wheelchair users, Wheelchair accessible
info
Everything looks familiar, yet feels off. The body has returned home, but the mind hasn’t fully caught up.
pulling the trigger is a solo performance at the intersection of dance and physical theatre, created by Daria Titova and performed by Marko Šakić. Through movement and text, the work follows a soldier confronted with his own past – not fully able to face or escape it. Moving between control and collapse, stillness and explosion, rupture and softening, the performance unfolds as an encounter with memory, responsibility, and the weight of irreversible choices. Rather than offering judgement or resolution, “pulling the trigger” stays with complexity, questioning what it truly means to “pull the trigger,” both literally and metaphorically, and whether we can ever truly understand the choices of those who do.
Biography
Daria Titova (1999) is a dance artist from Russia, currently based in Amsterdam. She works with dance, physical theatre, voice, and text, using the body as a starting point for storytelling. Her work explores how movement and language can coexist, contradict, and strengthen one another, creating space for layered, psychologically charged narratives. Through performance, she seeks to engage with the beauty, vulnerability, and contradictions of being human.
Since graduating from ArtEZ University of the Arts in 2022, Daria has worked with companies and makers including Cecilia Moisio Company, Action Zoo Humain, BonteHond, Maas Theater en Dans, and DOX, among others. Alongside performing for other makers, Daria develops her own interdisciplinary work. In pulling the trigger, Daria collaborates with performer Marko Šakić, a dancer and performer of Bosnian origin. Marko’s distinct physicality and performative presence play a central role in shaping the work, bringing emotional precision and embodied depth to the Soldier’s character.
credits
Concept, direction, choreography – Daria Titova (in collaboration with Marko Šakić)
Performance – Marko Šakić @markeaux
Text – Aska Hayakawa
Music & sound design – Ilya Dzeahel @sinkopa_
Voice actor – Kristian de Carvalho
Costume design – Sarah Zechut Dramaturgy – Hans Timmerman
Movement & voice coach – Katarzyna Sitarz
Made possible by Stichting Janivo, Voordekunst, Magnezy Dance Productions.