“An impressive dance opera about the patriarchal structure that will not yield.”
★★★★★ de Volkskrant
Winner of the VSCD Mimeprize 2020/2021 and nominated for the Swan for the most impressive dance production 2020!
About the performance
The ice is melting, the climate is changing, the balance of power is starting to shift. The future holds great uncertainty. 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?
the warm winds of change are coming but the warm winds of change are coming. As in the famous drawings by MC Escher, we see transformation occur step by step. Sometimes hardly noticeable, sometimes with a shock. Choreographer Nicole Beutler lets familiar patterns ‘melt away’, creating space for a newly imagined future.
Eight dancers, singers and a virtuoso drummer – draw the audience into a ritual for the end of patriarchy. The men are caught in the icy rhythm of Henry Purcell’s ‘The Cold Song’ (“let me freeze again”), but the warm winds of change are coming. As in the famous drawings by MC Escher, we see transformation occur step by step. Sometimes hardly noticeable, sometimes with a shock. Choreographer Nicole Beutler lets familiar patterns ‘melt away’, creating space for a newly imagined future.
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 effortlessly into a performative experience without bounds.
About Nicole Beutler
Nicole Beutler (1969) has been making multidisciplinary dance, theatre and performance for 20 years. In 2017, in collaboration with opera company Silbersee, she created DIDO, a theatrical and musical deconstruction of Henry Purcell’s famous aria ‘When I Am Laid’ from Dido and Aeneas. For 8: METAMORPHOSIS she again explores the boundaries of opera as a genre. Beutler’s work is characterised by endless diversity, a surprising vocabulary of form, intuitive wisdom and abstract beauty. This makes her unique as a theatre and dance maker in the Netherlands. In 2018 Beutler was awarded the Gieskes-Strijbis Podiumprijs, the most important award for quality and diversity in the performing arts in the Netherlands. Coming years, she’ll be working on her trilogy RITUALS OF TRANSFORMATION, in search of a new balance between humans, earth, animals and technology.
Credits:
Concept, direction, choreography: Nicole Beutler
Music: Gary Shepherd, Henry Purcell
Percussion: Robbert van Hulzen
Performers and co-creators: Felix Schellekens, Dominic Kraemer, Sebastian Pickering Pedersen, Rob Polmann, Timo Tembuyser, João Dinis Pinho and Drew Santini
Lighting design: Minna Tiikkainen
Costumes: Jessica Helbach
Scenography: Julian Maiwald
Dramaturgy: Igor Dobricic
Artistiek assistance: Justa ter Haar
Dramaturgic advice: Fabienne Vegt
Répétiteur / tour management: João Dinis Pinho
Production assistance: Marijn Maurits
Light: Julian Maiwald, Prem Scholte Albers, Desirée van Gelderen
Audio: Valentijn Berkhout
Producer: Nicole Beutler Projects
Coproducers: Operadagen Rotterdam, Internationaal Theater Amsterdam
With the support of: Ammodo, Fonds 21, Fonds Podiumkunsten, Amsterdams Fonds voor de Kunst
Acquisition & tour planning: Theaterzaken Via Rudolphi
Socials
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