In the ecology between poetic language and choreography, words collide woefully with flesh.
photo : Dieter Hartwig
Pastoral poetry from Greek and Roman antiquity is at the base of Sergiu Matis’s performance “Hopeless.” In an unceasingly warming world, what is left of the idyllic, cultivated nature described in the poems of Theocritus and Virgil? Are the poets perhaps themselves responsible for setting it on fire with their trivial erotic turbulence, and their politicising of landscape? In “Hopeless.”, we forge our own pastoral settings out of shreds, fragments and remains, like data from a library of sounds of extinct animals, or old and new translations of the Idylls. A desperate act of putting back together, or franticly trying to conserve what’s left, all the while mourning the losses yet to come. A general sensation of powerlessness transforms us into spectators at a festival of catastrophes and ruination.
The performers in “Hopeless.” are technologically enhanced mermaids, nymphs and shepherds that desperately compete to see who can make the audience cry the loudest. The ecology between poetic language and choreography enables words to collide woefully with flesh, and vocal cords to give the tone to motion so that we can shout out loudly, and exorcise all possible dystopian scenarios. Hopelessness is not a state of a paralysis, but a powerful force that moves us to act.
Concept, choreography: Sergiu Matis | Performance: Martin Hansen, Sergiu Matis, Manon Parent | Text: Sergiu Matis, Mila Pavicevic, based on translations of Virgil and Theocritus | Sound design: AGF aka Antye Greie | Dramaturgy: Mila Pavicevic | Set design: Dan Lancea | Costume: Philip Ingman | Light design: Sandra Blatterer | Production management: Dag Lohde | Choreografic assistance: Orlando Rodriguez
Duration: 2,5 hours
Premiere of Hopeless.
Berlin, Radialsystem. Feburary 2019
photo : Dieter Hartwig
photo : Dieter Hartwig
photo : Dieter Hartwig
photo : Dieter Hartwig
photo : Dieter Hartwig
photo Dieter Hartwig
photo : Jubal Battisti
photo : Jubal Battisti