Tag: contemporary theatre

Towers of Melancholy

Posted on by Martyna

TOWERS OF MELANCHOLY, 2016

 

This dance performance is a repeated successful collaboration between choreographer and director Aira Naginevičiūtė, poet and playwright Gabriele Labanauskaite, composer Vladas Dieninis and scenographer Arūnas Adomaitis. These artists managed to unite dance, text, poetry and music into one mesmerizing performance.
 


 
TOWERS OF MELANCHOLY sets off to experiment with the poetic language, metaphors and it develops a new movement and music lexicon to paint the darkness and light of the human existence, divinity, world and existential void. This interdisciplinary project researches that state of mind, where everybody experiences the marginalised parts of themselves – solitude and new understanding of spacetime. This particular state allows us to meditate on the fog, to die and reborn in different bodies, unfamiliar forms, to be able to introspect and reflect on the reality.
 
“Melancholy is treated as an unconscious state which happens to us unplanned and unexpectedly. Melancholy is like a fog, which covers the thoughts. It’s like a field, in which we deeply navigate in our repeated experiences. It’s like an oasis, where we can meet ourselves,” – says A. Naginevičiūtė.
 
Photography: tiketa.lt
 

Performance does explore melancholy, but is not dramatic. Sweet sorrow and anguish go hand in hand with the irony and tenderness, a true human emotion turns into the aesthetic reality of a scary and beautiful light of our inner selves.
 
“TOWERS OF MELANCHOLY analyzes different forms of melancholy and seeks to break the stereotype of melancholy as something very obscure and depressive. Actually, it is important to recognize and accept this kind of state; it hides in the fog, a teardrop, a relationship, togetherness or even the drizzle” – comments A. Naginevičiūtė.
 
The name of performance was inspired by the poem written by Gabriele Labanauskaite. Choreographer A. Naginevičiūtė used it as a means of inspiration. During the dance performance G. Labanauskaite herself recites this and other of her poems.
 
Photography: tiketa.lt
 

//
Yesterday I saw the towers of melancholy tumble down

Yesterday I saw how to demolish means to build

Yesterday I saw how bleary are the eyelids of a dream

And how the morning fights the legions of the night

Yesterday I saw how butterflies choke

Recover and grow wings of tempered steel

Under their bellies. Then take off easily

And fly the past-tense words into the day

Yesterday I saw how our wishes kill us

Yesterday I saw how fog withstands

Yesterday I saw how charms dissolve

The die is cast, the choice is made: to be.
//

 

Photography: Laura Vansevičienė
 

CREATIVE TEAM

Choreographer: Aira Naginevičiūtė
Playwright: Gabrielė Labanauskaitė
Composer: Vladas Dieninis
Scenographer: Arūnas Adomaitis
Lighting designer: Vladimiras Šerstabojevas
Performers: Goda Laurinavičiūtė, Greta Grinevičiūtė, Gabrielė Labanauskaitė
Initiators: Kaunas Artists’ House, dance theatre “AIROS”, audio-visual poetry band “AVASPO”

Dramokratija festival

Posted on by Martyna

DRAMOKRATIJA FESTIVAL

 

MANIFESTO

In the begining there was a word.
And every word is important for Dramokratija!
The drama is international.
Story is not only drama and drama is not only the story.
Here anyone can create drama.
Bcause the drama is alive.
The path to the drama is based on words.
(dramatic pause)
You got the right to drama,
So don’t be afraid to spill the ink!

 

DRAMOKRATIJA is a democratic play reading festival organized by playwrights themselves. It is a place to read plays, analyze them and present to the public. By any means to all the participants the most important is the process, not the result. This festival not only invites people to the theatre, but also brings the theatre to people by gathering in various non-theatrical spaces in Vilnius, such as bars, night clubs, galleries, beauty parlours, where the fourth wall dividing the audience and the readers could be eliminates.
 

 

The festival has been initiated as an educational-practical assignment of Playwright course by Gabrielė Labanauskaitė at the Lithuanian Academy of Music and Theatre. Gabrielė sought to share the results of student playwriting in public and draw attention to the contemporary Lithuanian dramaturgy. Not only did she manage to establish a creative space for communication, culture and learning outside the Academy, but also helped the festival to go international and inspired the alumni of Theatre and Cinema studies to successfully continue the organization of this annual event.

Special thanks to Indrė Bručkutė, Živilė Zablackaitė, Irena Kunevičiūtė, Mantas Rimkus and others!
 

DRAMOKRATIJA is built entirely on the democratic principle, so it has no traditional theatre hierarchy and fosters the idea of people picking the play, the idea over the names or other priorities.

The festival is libertine, DYI creative lab, composed of three parts: pre-scheduled playwriting workshop, gathering of playwrights, actors and directors for the improvement of a written play and representation readings at the non-traditional venues of Vilnius. Creative workshops have already lured the members of the international playwright community and were delivered by such inspirations as German dramatist Theresia Walser, Russian screenwriter and playwright Michail Durnekov, British playwright Chris Thorpe and Swedish dramatist and director AnnaLiza Hertzberg.
 

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🎭Anyone interested in the contemporary dramaturgy can read the plays on DRAMOKRATIJA website → www.dramokratija.en