Notes from the Underworld, Amsterdam, 2012 |
Namiko Gahier-Ogawa & Gary Goldschneider |
Notes from the Underworld |
 Namiko Gahier-Ogawa, French-Japanese director-choreographer, and renowned concert pianist-composer Gary Goldschneider present a contemporary live dance / theatre / piano performance, Notes from the Underworld.
The show features Goldschneider's live piano music and also painted videos with atmospheric sounds combined with Gahier-Ogawa's visceral contemporary dance, accompanied by texts of Conrad, Beckett, Lorca and Wordsworth on an initiatory journey to the Underworld, Pluto's kingdom.
We always go back to the myths because they are universal, containing timeless truths about mankind.
Based on the seasonal myth of Persephone abducted by Pluto into the Underworld, Notes from the Underworld develops another view of the Greek tale, in which a contemporary heroine decides to explore her psyche, going deeper down into labyrinthian caverns and sinuous waters, in an attempt to discover the sacred dimension of life.
Like a speleologist, crossing the boundaries of these dark and unconscious territories, Persephone searches for her transcendental self and at one point meets another reflection of herself, facing unleashed desires in the shape of Pluto, the Lord of the Underworld.
Pluto and Persephone are thus mirrors of each other; opposites, yet strangely similar and bound together by powerful drives.
Her independent journey will lead her to dangerous borders, to losing her way, finally discovering traces of a tortuous Styx, touching new realities of illusion, shedding dry dead skins behind her in a quest for metamorphosis and transcendence.
The obscurities of Pluto's Underworld kingdom reveal all fears but also give birth to light.
Thus, we refer to the Underworld as a fertile night within oneself.
The darkest moment of the night is just before dawn, before the plant thrusts up through the surface of the earth, before the harvest of revelation... |
"The mind of man is capable of anything -- because everything is in it,
all the past as well as all the future. What was there after all?"
Joseph Conrad, Heart of Darkness |
Namiko Gahier-Ogawa (Director / Choreographer / Performer)
Gary Goldschneider (Pianist / Composer / Performer)
Debby Mulholland (Assistant Stage Director)
Julie Rousse (Sound Designer)
Hallelujah - Kawasaki / Sahara (Costume Designer)
Gala Martinoia (Painter / Video Artist)
Flore Charbouillot / Namiko Gahier-Ogawa (Accessories Designers)
Joost Kist (Sound Engineer) |
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