Still Life is a new creation by Alan Lucien Øyen for Mirai Moriyama and Daniel Proietto, two performers who have ventured far beyond contemporary dance in search for new physical expressions – together they share experience from working with Kabuki, Butoh, contemporary theatre, film and television.
Still Life, translates into French as Nature Morte - dead nature. Butoh is often described as living death, brought forward by distress. A state of dying, still alive: a suspension of grotesque dilapidation. What better image to describe our time? Nature is dying, and all the while we’re rendered immobile, stuck in our still lives – living, but dying. Through the windows of our little chambers, we watch forest fires and torrential floods tear away at the landscape – we stare life in the face – transfixed by the constant echo of our desires, what we think we want – predicted for us, on the basis of our fractured selves, millions of data-points re-hashed and sold back to us as advertisements for lives we wished we were living: Connected, disconnected.
With the incessant acceleration of communication, technology, and interconnectivity, more and more people are expressing increased feelings of isolation, alienation and polarization. The world has become a global village of a million minorities, each one a threat to one’s own - we’re living through crisis of identity, there’s a war for everyone - it’s chaos.
But there’s a terrible monotony in chaos. As we sit, wide awoke and transfixed, trapped in a terrifying stop-motion time-lapse, a white noise trembles underneath our still lives; humming, burning and screaming behind the mask of sophistication that has become modern social interaction.
"With Still Life I aim to create a work that innately deals with nature – within and without – exploring how we can mend our relationship with ourselves, and in turn each other and the living world around us.
Omnia mors aequat - In death we are equal."
- Alan Lucien Øyen, (April 2023)
Direction / Choreography / Set design ALAN LUCIEN ØYEN
with MIRAI MORIYAMA and DANIEL PROIETTO
Script ALAN LUCIEN ØYEN ANDREW WALE Lighting design MARTIN FLACK Sound design GUNNAR INNVÆR Costume design STINE SJØGREN
World premiere May 23, 2024 at DANSENS HUS, OSLO Number of performers: 2
Number of people on tour: 7 - TBC Venue size: 12x12 to 16x16 - TBC
INTERNATIONAL TOURING
menno@mennoplukker.com, +1-514-524-7119 http://mennoplukker.com
Co-production: winter guests, Dansens Hus, Oslo, Julidans festival, Amsterdam. Other co-producers TBC.
Copyright © 2021 Daniel Proietto I House of Drama I KNOW
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