MEDIATHEK

8: METAMORPHOSIS is both a dance performance and a contemporary opera about embracing the changes that lie ahead. Will they come in a gradual process or as a series of painful shocks? After her impressive Bauhaus trilogy, director and choreographer Nicole Beutler returns to the big stage with a new total work of art.

Eight men – dancers, singers and a drummer – draw the audience into a ritual for a new era. Inspired by the mathematical transitions in the illusory art of M.C. Escher, familiar patterns transform into new possibilities. 8: METAMORPHOSIS invites you into a twilight zone, a no-man’s-land that is both hopeful and threatening. Is destruction necessary for us to learn a new way of living together?

The performance is propelled by the frozen rhythm of Henry Purcell’s ‘The Cold Song’. In this haunting aria, a winter spirit laments the coming of spring. He resists it with all his might, but must inevitably melt. Choral singing, virtuoso percussion by drummer Frank Rosaly and a filmic soundtrack by composer Gary Shepherd gradually unravel the aria before building to a liberating musical explosion.

Like a ‘visual artist in theatre’, Beutler composes a dance opera according to her own rules. In search of a new perspective, stage and auditorium are inverted. The theatre space becomes a single living organism in which dance, music, lighting design and visual composition merge into a performative experience without bounds.

/ PRODUCTION /

DIRECTOR: Nicole Beutler
COMPOSER / MUSIC: Gary Shepherd
COSTUME DESIGN: Jessica Helbach
COMPOSER / MUSIC: Henry Purcell
DRAMATURGE: Igor Dobričić
STAGE DESIGN: Julian Maiwald
LIGHT DESIGNER: Minna Tiikkainen

PREMIERE: Monday, May 20, 2019 (Luxor Theatre, Rotterdam, Netherlands)
DATE OF RECORDING: Saturday, May 18, 2019 (International Theatre Amsterdam, Netherlands)

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