Big stage production BLINK explores themes of rhizomatic thinking through identity, where inner landscapes collide with external surrealities.
BLINK a collaborative creation between Annamari and Ryan, which Staatstheater Braunschweig commissioned in 2021. This creative process involved a company of 11 dancers, Ryan and Annamari, in conversation around overlapping spectrums of physicaland emotional states or experiences. The overall structure was framed by scores developed out of long improvisation sessions guided by physical and psychological prompts within the soundscape of Curgenven’s 1-hour track, Bardo. There is an objectless presence about Bardo. It is sonically multilayered in scope: heavy drones of sub-bass layered with harmonic overtones, vinyl static, fragments of instrumentals, reverberated chambers of static overlapped with binaural frequencies, and industrial-like
sounds. It contains no central plot or narrative, and its content is more experiential than representational. The soundscape provided an unpredictable rhythm of shifting tension filled with false beginnings and
endings, long uninterrupted silences, and loops of faintly audible songs one might recognize but not quite place. The sonic space was often ‘empty,’ and when sound came, it never told what it was. This work
offered a temporal and relational space for the performer and spectator to explore. A primary goal of the work was to avoid the definition of what was happening yet to describe it in great detail - something that
Robert Curgenven’s work excels at.
Premiere 18.02.2022 STAATTHEATER BRAUNSCHWEIG großes haus
Concept and choreography: THAR BE DRAGONS/ Annamari Keskinen & Ryan Mason
Performers: Alice Baccile, Fenia Chatzakou, Levente Bálint, Anna Degen, Brendon Feeney, Joshua Haines, Mariateresa Molino, Nils Röhner, Sofia Romano, Mátyás Ruzsom, Adrian J. Wanliss
Dramaturgy: Ira Goldbecher
Light: Katharina Möller & Daniel Bock
Sound: Thomas Bohnsack
Stage manager: Sonja Horisberger
Sound desing: THAR BE DRAGONS & Kaj Mäki-Ullakko
Text: THAR BE DRAGONS in collaboration with the performers
Video: Gregor Dobiaschowski
Production/Co-commission: Staatstheater Braunschweig
Video on the thar be dragons website: a cumana film experiment
Full recording of the show by request.
