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

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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”

AVASPO COLLECTIVE

AVaspo was a band performing audio-visual poetry. It highly promoted and contributed to the development of the experimental music concept in Lithuania. This group had remained on stage from 2009 to 2016, all of band’s members were also active participants of the local and international art community. This talented audio-visual collective managed to translate the visions and dreams of its leader – poet and playwright, Gabrielė Labanauskaitė into the vivid flow of sounds and images. Magic of audio-visual technologies and professionalism helped to fuse the intriguing talents of the new generation composers, multi-instrumentalists and video artists.

AVASPO band

AVaspo stood for the modern poetry and put all the effort to popularize it both in Lithuania and Europe. As a band it had always been in transformation, constantly experimenting. The axis of the creative content was the mystic, psychedelic, philosophic and even grotesque lyrics of Gabriele Labanauskaite. It cultivated the improvisation and was complementedwith the sounds and visuals.

As in the Mayan calendar, the years gone by

Add up to zero

Signifying nothing more than an empty shell.

Our existence

Is equally insignificant

Or the same fulfillment –

Depends on how you look at it.

(poem “In the Mayan Calendar”)

AVaspo music did not receive much sympathy from the critics at first. Lithuanian music observer Goda Raibytė confessed that a listener of such music must be mature enough: “Taming the music of AVASPO equals to taming a wild beast – one has to do it carefully, with love and attention even to the slightest detail. Everything is important in this kind of music: it offers plenty of surprise, it does not have a plan to follow, but ensures an uncontrollable aesthetic experience….”

Eventually, AVaspo found its target audience and discovered the way to the very soul of it. In 2013 a band was awarded as “The Best Experimental Music Group of 2012” at the national level.

Members of AVaspo were always open to any kind of novelty and experiments. They even performed at the obscure locations: they employed the atypicality of any place to make it a puzzle, a teaser, a creative challenge. Their shows were known to balance on the edge of a performance and a concert. Shows playfully touched the topics of the interpersonal and public misunderstandings, war and peace, visual culture and the triumph of the mass media, love and tolerance. The band brought the variety of modern poetry forms to the spotlight, gathered the artists of different disciples to work together and established a relationship with the foreign artists. One of the most distinguished accomplishments of AVaspo was the primary idea and organization of the annual interdisciplinary art festival “TARP”.

ALBUMS

💿2013 3rd album CD “OCEAN IS BLEEDING”. New album tour in Vilnius, Kaunas, Klaipėda and Šiauliai.

💿2010 2nd album “NIAGARA”. New album tour in Iceland, Austria, Germany, Czech Republic, Lithuania and a show at Contemporary Art Festival “Virus” in Šiauliai, Lithuania.

💿2009 1st album CD “THERE IS NO OCEAN”. New album show in Vilnius and at the International Experimental Music Festival “SKIF” in Saint Petersburg, Russia.

AWARDS

🏆2013 “The Best Experimental Music Band of 2012”, National Alternative Music Awards “T.E.T.E”, Vilnius, Lithuania.

PROJECTS

2016 Premiere of the poetry and dance performance TOWERS OF MELANCHOLY with the dance theatre “Airos” (director: Aira Naginevičiūtė) at the theatre “Menų spaustuvė” in Vilnius and the National Kaunas Drama theatre, Lithuania

Photography: tiketa.lt

2014 Premiere of poetry and music performance GONDII SYNDROME (director Saulė Norkutė) at Kirtimai Cultural Center, Vilnius, Lithuania

2013 Premiere of music and dance performance “Recycling Rituals” together with the International Interdisciplinary project at the culture bar “Kablys”, Culture Night Festival, Vilnius, Lithuania

2011 Performance/concert/art installation “De Solitude” with the director of experimental cinema Nicolas Perge and video artist Raphael Dupont at Culture Night Festival in Vilnius, Lithuania.

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🎧 Listen to all the AVaspo albums ➡ online!

Tag: Vladas Dieninis