Until the moment when God is destroyed by the extreme exercise of beauty

(2006)

www.orumodofumo.com

How can we engage in the theatrical state to the point of exhaustion? Choosing the medium that we have in common, but haven't mastered. Looking people in the face and inviting them to follow when we go elsewhere. The here and now we are looking for is so widespread that it doesn't belong to anybody. It has been removed. We start again from the beginning, and never reach the same point.
Six seated persons. Their bodies speak. Their joint fate is expressed through an unstable language, English spoken with strange tones. Their capacity to communicate is constantly challenged. They navigate between transparency and opaqueness, engaging in weaving ribbons, hanging from a thread.

-Bojana Bauer-


Strolling
When strolling, through a forest for example, everything is constantly changing and at the same time it all stays the same; the trees remain, in the end what changes is our perception (rhythm, sounds, touch, gaze).
We stroll through a mental space that takes place during the time of the performance.  The ideas offered are frayed as though we were strolling through a brain. Mechanisms include the association of ideas, sounds, falls within memory space, rebounds in a space of verifications.... Crossing the space of private desires, shared desires. To travel in this space as though it were a galactic journey... lost in the vacuum but truly enjoying this floating space where we don't expect anything, where there is nothing to expect.
This is an invitation to travel with us. Our preoccupations are essentially aimed at the spectator. Are you ready to follow us? To follow us in our preset time, without expecting anything spectacular. We are, without a doubt, clumsy people who stumble. The only spectacular element is unison... but our choir is not in accord. In reality, the journey doesn't move forward: as in the forest, everything changes all the time and in the end nothing visibly changes.
There is no desire to inform on whatever. This is not a lecture. The things that are stated are not important in themselves. What sustains time is the silences, the in-between, the gaps. We are not in an absurd world.
We're in the non-space and the non-time of the present. As inside a brain, as with thinking, anything can arrive at any time. It's beyond our control. The body, our bodies, are a reflection of their bodies (those of spectators). But sometimes this reflection is a distorting mirror, or perhaps, what we say is the opposite of what we want to say. The roles are inverted. Phrases are double-edged. We don't want depression. Our laying-bare is joyful. The impact of our environment, Judaeo-Christian, of course, prevents us from completely baring ourselves. We are in a musical game. Our music is made from our musicalities/musics. The soothing divine appears in out meditation songs. The animal hears badly, understands badly.
It is made of happy confusions.
In the beginning was the Word, thus the destruction of God begins with the destruction of the word.

-Loup Abramovici, Impressions during the process-

Artistic direction: Vera Mantero
Performed and co-created by: Antonija Livingstone, Brynjar Bandlien, Loup Abramovici, Marcela Levi, Pascal Quéneau, Vera Mantero
Stage and costume design: Nadia Lauro
Live music: Boris Hauf
Lighting: Jean-Michel Le Lez
Dramaturgy collaborator: Bojana Bauer
Delegated production: O Rumo do Fumo
Co-produced by: Centre Choréographique National de Tours, Centre Pompidou, Les Spectacles Vivants/Festival d'Automne, Culturgest de Lisboa, Le Quartz/Scène Nationale de Brest, O Espaço do Tempo de Montemor-o-Novo
With the support of: Fundação Calouste Gulbenkian, Lisbon
O Rumo do Fumo is supported by the Instituto das Artes/Ministério de Cultura (Portugal)