Performative piece on desmodium (plants whose leaves move under the influence of light, touch and sound), mimosas (whose leaves move under the influence of light and touch) and two performers.
In this project, we make an attempt to discuss with The Rite of Sping at the composition and choreography level. Both Igor Stravinsky’s music and Vaslav Nijinsky’s choreography have create a ritualistic and wild work, which is a manifestation of the untamed forces of nature and bodily presence. Modris Eksteins the Canadian historian described Stravinsky’s ballet as „a breakthrough event of modernism,” which „constituted revolutionary energy and the apotheosis of life through sacrifice.” According to Eksteins, this work was „a manifestation of the experience of modernity, based on the constant negotiation of meanings between identity and otherness.”
What does a series of reconstructions within The Rite of Spring archive mean – a kind of “re-dancing” of the The Rite of Spring by plants grown in a greenhouse system and programmed to perform a planned score of movements in a specific time and space? What does codifying the untamed and vital Stravinsky’s ballet and shifting the „nature” towards an arbitrarily managed performer mean? What, from the narrative level, does the re-playing the Ancestors and Sacrifice roles by bisexual plants can change? Is this disturbance of gender-difference a challenge to break down the constitutive elements of sacrificial society? Can we find any emancipation movement in this reconstruction? How can we paradoxically avoid include the Other – by the attempt to exclude them.
Premiere: 18th September 2020 produced by Theatre Institute in Warsaw
(5th edition of the „Placówka” residency program)
Partners: SOHO Theatre, SOHO by Yareal, University of Warsaw Botanic Garden
CAST: Gosia Biela, Desmodiums, Oskar Malinowski, Mimosas
dramaturgy and directing: Klaudia Hartung-Wójciak
music: Piotr Peszat
set design: Barbara Hanicka
light design: Aleksandr Prowaliński
video: Paweł Kuligowski
choreographic collaboration: Oskar Malinowski
research cooperation: inż. Dorota Szubierajska, dr hab. Marcin Zych, prof. dr hab. Małgorzata Stpiczyńska
producer: Joanna Saran
director assistant: Jakub Hartung-Wójciak
NOSTALGIC BOYS 