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2023/2024 performance public space wilderness

LUSH BLAST:
WALKING PERFORMANCE

An outdoor dance performance grounded in the soils of Carpathian high altitudes.

Can dance mend our ties to the land and intimately connect us? LUSH BLAST is a walking performance in an urban park. It explores the relationality between natural and artificial, wild and domesticated. The performers guide the audience through varying atmospheres, from evocative songs to acidic humor, asking what remains of the wilderness in and around us. Using their physicalities and voices, they morph their presences inviting the audience into a sensual feast and cruel battlefield.

The project began in the summer of 2022, when, during our first field study in the Carpathian Wilderness, we encountered a young bear and an over 800 year old arolla pine. Since then, we keep learning from the old-growth forests and wildlife about what ‘power’ and ‘relatedness’ mean. Dance performance becomes a transformative space of re-articulating power as a vital force rather than a tool of control and exploitation.

PERFORMANCES:
HELLERAU - Kulturgarten Opening, Dresden (DE), 20.05.2023
BAZAAR FESTIVAL - Science Blast Evening, Prague (CZ), 22.03.2024
STUDIO ALTA - Alta Zeny, Prague (CZ), 02.07.2024
STUDIO ALTA, Prague (CZ), 11.10.2024

CREDITS:
Choreography Dorota Michalak, Alica Minar
Creation and performance Dorota Michalak/Polina Sonis, Alica Minar, Breanne Saxton, Ola Zielinska
Music & the romantic horse
Dramaturgy Maikon K
Text Katarína Bakosová, Maikon K
Costume Natálie Rajnisová
Light research Raquel Rosildete
Production Dorota Michalak, Alica Minar & col.

PARTNERS:
Studio ALTA in Prague (CZ)
Bazaar Festival in Prague (CZ)
Hellerau - Europäisches Zentrum der Künste in Dresden (DE)

SUPPORT:
State Fund of Culture of the Czech Republic
Czech-German Future Fund
Contemporary Arts Alliance Berlin

“THE DANCE OCCURS WHEN THE SKIN IS EATEN, WHEN THE SUN IS PHOTOSYNTHESIZED, WHEN THE WATER TRAVELS THROUGH OSMOSIS, AND IT DOESN'T STOP, AND THERE IS NO RUSH TO PERFORM.”

Breanne Saxton

“WE ARE TURNING THE AIR INTO FLESH. WE ARE A SWEET ENERGY STORAGE. WHISPERING STORIES OF SENTIENT WILDERNESS.”

PRESS & MEDIA