ZUAM is an immersive location based opera-ritual for four opera singers, Deaf dancer, electronics and video. It tells the story of an ancient-futurist tribe living in a world suspended between prehistoric times and distant future. In a 2,5 hour experience it explores the UrSprache, the proto-language researched by the Futurist poets, Antonin Artaud and Peter Brook as well as the sign language.

ZUAM is an attempt to reconnect with our inner self. It’s a meditative experience for the battered soul of a 21st century person, constantly overwhelmed and slightly lost in a fast changing world. It aims to give the audience a metaphysical and cathartic experience, speaking directly to the subconscious, while getting away from the outside reality.

The music is inspired by Bielski’s previous discoveries in the extended non-language-based vocal field, as well as the traditional music of Inuit, Tibetan, Sioux, Zulu, and Balinese people, with the addition of Celtic war instruments, Tibetan and Bhutanese ritual horns – all heavily processed electronically.

Technology plays an important part in the performance. The audience is scattered around an open space, surrounded by a circle of light tubes with two 4 meter high monoliths between them. One made of loudspeakers, the other out of LED screens projecting rhythmical shapes, noise and tribal patterns. A large controlled cloud of smoke appears in the centre of the area with faces of the ancestors projected on it.

Concept, composition, stage direction, libretto: Jerzy Bielski
Visuals, video, dramaturgy, lighting: Thomas Brand
Choreography: Sandra Abouav
Electronics, audiovisual programming: Tatiana Rosa
(Deaf) dancer: tba
Soprano, movement: Olga Siemienczuk
Soprano, movement: tba
Bass, movement: tba
Bass, movement: tba
Photos & video: Thomas Brand

Opera for the DEAF

This new opera piece is a true collaboration from the start, between the two cultures or worlds, the ones who use voice and the ones who use gestures in order to communicate or create. The performance takes place between the unreal world of a dream, with blurred, bended forms, eluding reason and logic, and the over exaggerated quasi-reality of the raw rationalist world. This intimate piece is partly an attempt to understand the frustration of Deaf people resulting from their misunderstanding by hearing people, and partly the creation of a space in which both these worlds and types of perception as well as methods of communication interpenetrate and influence each other.

With this concept in mind, we challenge and redefine the format of an opera, making it more inclusive towards the group, which is perhaps the most excluded from it. Therefore, it is our obligation, the people who can hear, to open the doors for the excluded community. That is why Fish dance when they are not sleeping has to look and sound different from any other operatic piece made exclusively for the hearing people.

The piece addresses both the Deaf and hearing audience, and it aims, apart from the artistic value, to draw the attention of most of us to the Deaf communities, with their own, separate culture, language, forms of expression, and, most of all their very different perception of the world. It is a beautiful and very special project, reaching for a truly unique quality.

Libretto and parts of the storyline are being created by Ilse Jobse, who is a Dutch Deaf poet, singer and actress. New technologies, such as motion sensors translating the sign language into audio, computer programmes translating the sound of a spoken voice into abstract visual shapes (as well as written text) which are then translated into dance, sign language translated into musical rhythm as well as sound processed by live electronics – all contribute to an entirely new artistic language and unique aesthetic characterising this piece.

This is a co-production with Dutch National Opera and European Network of Opera Academies (ENOA).

– Full interview (www.den.nl)

Concept, composition, stage direction, libretto: Jerzy Bielski
Choreography, dramaturgy: Sandra Abouav
Lighting, video, visuals, dramaturgy: Thomas Brand
Libretto: Ilse Jobse

Deaf singer: Ilse Jobse
Deaf actor: Ali Shafiee
Deaf dancer: Dennis Massar
Deaf dancer: Sharon Wesseling
Deaf dancer: Pawel Moleda
Soprano: Olga Siemienczuk
Paetzold recorder: Juho Myllyla
Cello: Pau Sola Masafrets
Live electronics, audiovisual programming: Tatiana Rosa
Photos: Kim Krijnen, Thomas Brand

interdisciplinary VR experience

This surreal existential tale driven by a musical score tells a story of an anonymous individual, who suddenly finds himself alone in the middle of an ocean. Disappointed by modern, superficial society, he chooses an "inner emigration" to his own safe space out in the open sea. There he is plagued by visions of the world he wanted to leave behind; dreams, half-forgotten memories and visions of the future surround him all around. When A. tries to flee from this confrontation, we become increasingly entangled in his subconsciousness. We are inside the A.’s world almost like inside the belly of a whale. We gradually discover what haunts him and the reason why he withdrew from life and society.

It is an ongoing project, with a premiere planned for 2023.

Team:
Concept, cinematography (360), animation: Thomas Brand
Concept, music, text: Jerzy Bielski
Audio design, Ambisonic audio mix: Tatiana Rosa
Actor ("A."): Aleksej Ovsiannikov

immersive VR music theatre experience
In the age of Artificial Intelligence, omnipresent, communicating with us internet bots and algorithms leading our search engines and, therefore, heavily influencing our access to information and world’s view, is a performer still an essential part of performance? Or can technology already surpass humans, replacing us in this role? And if so, how autonomous such an “androidic” performer could be from its human creator/programmer? And could it ever set free, or even better, multiply itself into few separate beings, having a simultaneous (artistic) conversation with each other? How could it communicate with us and what kind of communication would that be?No-One Show takes a viewer on a virtual, audiovisual journey through a world dominated by systems of algorithms and codes, to (re)discover the essence of being human. It allows one to immerse in parallel realities and to witness thrilling competition between a human and AI happening in front of our eyes.

Composer and interdisciplinary art maker Jerzy Bielski, has been redefining music, theatre, installation and performance art blend in his own way for a few years now with his group Futurists. In 'No-One Show' even the performers disappear from stage. This highly innovative movie/live spectacle, created partly by AI, searches for the definition of humanity in our hi-tech inflicted 21st century.

A bit of magic and a bit of ‘return to nature’ style also appeared in Jerzy Bielski’s "No-One Show". VR isn’t merely a trendy addition in here, but a medium, of which full potential has been used allowing to create results impossible to achieve any other way. However, the intense multimedia experience is only an introduction to much more…the ending being a positive surprise for many people.
– Krzysztof Stefanski (“Ruch Muzyczny”, September 2021)

An ode to a live meeting of an artist and the audience, or live meeting of people in general – as opposed to an online performance or a Zoom meeting. This partly a concert and partly performative “happening” takes form of a collage of events, scenes, music pieces, bits of (made-up) storytelling, videos and absurd comedy sketches – referring to the theater varieté form. NONline Opera is an interactive online/live event based on the music of C i r c u i t, a highly eclectic (experimental rock, hyper jazz, contemporary classical, avant-garde electronics) 8-piece ensemble from London, UK, led by a Polish composer-performer, Jerzy Bielski.

Apart from the enthusiastic Celebration of Live (however, often with surreal, lost in translation misunderstandings, language mishaps, or speaking in codes instead of openly), this piece it is equally about addressing the issues, which are deeply rooted in our every day reality, such as: over-consumerism, greed, AI and technology-inflicted world, polarisation of societies, and social revolution of today. That’s why, in the end it becomes an attempt to make sense of the chaotic reality we happen to be living in, with a huge chunk of humour and distance to it, focusing on an interaction and creating a bond with the audience. Videos and other visual elements (animation, kinetic text, elaborate lighting) play a very important role in the show as well, emphasising the meaning of messages behind Circuit songs and making the whole experience a wholesome
“feast-for-the-senses”.

About Circuit:

The band sounds like nothing else before them (…) [Circuit] is much more than nine instruments on one stage. It‘s a real riddle for a music lover and can by no means be pigeonholed or bore.
– Goniec Polski (London, UK)

Circuit’s music is a patchwork of all possible styles, a blend of music and performance art that combines sound and silence, images, samples and murmurs. It’s a deconstructionist approach to music.
– Port Kultury (Katarzyna Gajewska, Gdańsk)

Song ‘Thank you from the mountain’ simply knocks you off your feet.
– Cooltura (Piotr Dobroniak, London)

Creative team:
concept, composition, text: Jerzy Bielski
dramaturgy, videos, video post-production, lighting: Thomas Brand (NL)
acting advice: Martijn Nieuwerf (NL)

Performers:
actor (“The Composer”): Martijn Nieuwerf (NL)
flute, samples: Tatiana Rosa (NL/POR)
voice: Olga Siemienczuk (DE/PL)
guitar, voice: Jerzy Bielski (NL/PL)
trumpet: Matt Ellis Devitt (UK)
drums: Zach McCullough (USA/GR)
double bass, bass guitar: Ed Babar (UK)
piano, keys: Abel Tuinstra (NL)

It's a project inspired by the ideas and the life of a linguistic genius Ludwik Zamenhof. In this large-scale interdisciplinary piece Bielski constructs a world which surprises, challenges and confuses. His work, praised by the public and the press, is unconventional, limitless and deliberately outside any boxes. The international cast, consisting of actors, musicians and dancers who between them speak seven languages, involves the audience in an exploration of communication (or miscommunication) and language. An event in which music and visual elements such as theater, contemporary dance, installation, video, set design, costumes and light are completely integrated. The traditional separation of stage and audience also becomes blurred.
(from Muziekgebouw aan 't IJ website)

With Zamenhof Project: Breaking the Codes, Polish music theater maker Jerzy Bielski, artist-in-residence at Gaudeamus, brought an ode to Ludwik Zamenhof, creator of Esperanto and a champion of world peace. With Bielski no precise sound explorations, but a Babylonian collage of texts and languages, noise, pop, jazz, punk, sketches, DNA and computer codes, Zappa-like madness and public participation (...)

Bielski (who played the guitar himself) and his performers hoisted in tracksuits put down a highly energetic and well-timed show, in which there was also room for stillness. (...) Bielski has an undeniable sense of theater. Zamenhof Project was musical "monkey cages" for advanced, at high speed and full of dedication.

– NRC **** (Joep Stapel, 6 September 2019)

Concept, Composition, Text, Installations/Scenography Design, Artistic & Production Leader: Jerzy Bielski
(Final) Stage Direction: Frances Sanders
Stage Movement: Sandra Abouav
(Initial) Stage Direction: Laura Jakschas
Set Design, Costumes, Installations: Karolina Maksimowicz
Light Design: Thomas Brand
Video, Installations: Felix de Bousies
Audio, Video, Live Electronics: Tatiana Rosa

Voice & Movement:
Richard Dubelski  (France)
Eva Layla Schipper  (Netherlands)
Felix de Bousies  (Belgium/Greece)
Akim Moiseenkov  (Netherlands)
Pawel Chomczyk (Poland)
Claire Malchrowicz  (France)
Kirstine Lindemann  (Denmark)

Piano, MIDI-keyboard (Asko|Schönberg – K[h]AOS): Tim Sabel
Percussion, Drums (Asko|Schönberg – K[h]AOS): Noè Rodrigo Gisbert
Guitars: Jerzy Bielski

Production Assistant: Matthijs Mantel

Zamenhof Project: Breaking the Codes  is a coproduction of Foundation Futurists and Gaudeamus.

Main Partner: Gaudeamus

Other Partners:
Asko|Schönberg, Fonds Podiumkunsten, Amsterdams Fonds voor de Kunst, Adam Mickiewicz Institute, Warsaw Autumn, Compagnie METAtarses, Muziekhuis Utrecht, Het Huis Utrecht, Instytut Teatralny im. Z. Raszewskiego, Amsterdamse Bostheater, Intro In Situ, Meakusma, Universal World Esperanto Association, Esperanto Nederland (Rotterdam), Grupa Coincidentia, Białystok Esperanto Assotiation, Przetwórnia Meblowa Białystok

Music theatre project with the aim of staging the poetry, manifestos and the other writings of the Italian, Russian and Polish Futurists from the early 20th century (as well as the anti-Futurist writer, S.I. Witkiewicz, from the same period). Recreating the revolutionary spirit of their original performances was, however, only a starting point or a pretext to have a much closer look at our contemporary society through the 'prism' of the Futurists' often radical ideology and aesthetics.

This exceptional concert conceived by Jerzy Bielski combines (non) music and theatrical performance to provide an hour-long (art) history lesson laced with humour (...)

[Futurists is] a group of fearless thinkers who expose our common madness, our willingness to rush headlong into the fray without heeding the outcome. (…)

They are not cute, they don't even try to be nice. They are loud, they are brash, they take no prisoners. They brought a goldfish and they're on a mission to show us that we have a problem, and it's only going to get worse.
– The Critter (South Africa, Steve Kretzmann, Sep 13 2015)

Concept, text, compositon: Jerzy Bielski
(Final) Stage direction: Laura Jakschas (DE)
Technical Consult./Machines: Felix Bousies (BE/GR), Tatiana Rosa (NL)

Voice & movement:
Marko Ivic (HR)
Pia Podgornik (SL)
Olga Siemienczuk (DE)
Matthias Sigurdsson (IC)
Kirstine Lindemann (DK)
Jerzy Bielski

Prepared Piano/Live Electronics: Panos Iliopoulos (GR)
Live Electronics: Akim Moiseenkov (NL)
Drums/Found objects: Tristan Renfrow (USA), Olaf Rykała (PL)

Anti-war piece exposing the underlying aims of large corporation CEOs, bankers and politicians, which make them start and run bloody conflicts around the world. This collage of images, frightening and beautiful at the same time, soundscapes and precise choreographies, often contrasts with melancholic parts in the piece, which emphasise the peaceful, paradise-like setting of the Bostheater and our distance to the violence going on every day around us. At one point the performers break it and take the action off stage, bringing it close to the audience, so that it becomes a whole new experience in the end.

The stage of the Amsterdam Bostheater serves as a sea, whether it is filled with oil or with refugees. The isolated images in this performance look surreal against the paradise background of the Bostheater. Two worlds come together, revealing our distance or negligence to the 'other world', which exists every day.

Interdisciplinary piece for 7 performers (actors, dancers, musicians), putting the powerful people of the world (multinational corporation directors, politicians, bankers, etc.), next to the ones affected the most by their decisions (homeless people, soldiers taking part in wars, their civilian victims and refugees), confronted with the 'average public members'. The effects which come out of this are from highly poetic and lyrical up to absurd and hyper realistic, connected to our every day world, however intertwined with abstract musical and visual images and soundscapes.

The piece is rich in unusual sound layers and strong visual elements. Dramatised and choreographed scenes are accompanied by spoken voice arrangements, live percussion, electronics, guitar and a prerecorded soundtrack.

Musically iron strong (…)
– Het Parool  (Amsterdam, Sander Janssens, July 2016)

Jerzy Bielski lets a few musicians, technical assistant, and a few mimers to, quite literally, take possession of this enormous space, of this science fiction graveyard. With their performance, they tell a story-not-a-story, about self-fulfilling egos, which are just a little too comfortable delusions, and therefore are overwhelmed by a stroboscopically highlighted war on terror. As the three performers hang half-dead on the ropes or are being buried alive by the assistant, the searchlights high above us say to us that it’s our turn now, the spectators at the tribune. I won’t give away what happens next.
– De Groene Amsterdammer  (Amsterdam, Loek Zonneveld, July 2016)

Concept, text, music, choreography, scenography, costumes, light design: Jerzy Bielski
Scenography Assistant: Maciej Nosal
Actors: Eline van Gils, Joey Schrouwen, Mees Borgman, Maciej Nosal
Prepared Piano/Live Electronics: Panos Iliopoulos
Drums/Percussion: Tristan Renfrow
Guitars: Jerzy Bielski

Sat at a ‘board meeting’, four performers explore the every-day influence of the world of banks and large corporations on our life. With rhythm, voices, carefully studied gestures and face expressions, they expose the underlying messages and hidden goals of that specific world, twisting and distorting them on the way. The audience is an active participant, following the leaders’ obsessive drive for competition and the will to control people’s desires and dreams. Fast-paced, dynamic action literally draws an audience into it, making it all round immersive experience.

The success of this performance lies not only in the fact that with modest means (chairs, tables, paper, and a beamer) a whole new universe is convincingly evoked in front of the audience’s eyes, so that they cannot do anything else but join in…Also, the success lies, just as much, in the detailed choreography, which, while at the same time helping the performers on stage/the meeting room, it nearly aggressively puts a full control over the piece’s atmosphere into their hands.
– Theaterkrant **** (Netherlands, Pieter Rings, September, 2016)

This is a performance that you do not forget (...) The way Bielski and Abouav make theater is anything but traditional.
– Het Parool ****   (Amsterdam, Camila Bennink, September, 2016)

The true impact of + _ /, = _ X%  by composer Jerzy Bielski, comes with the delirious criticism of the irrational chaos of financial markets, using the means of systematic choreography. That’s why, we are delighted to say, that the project will continue and you will be able to revisit it soon.
– Ballroom Review of Dance    (Paris, Marie Juliette Verga, December, 2015)

(…) in this funny and participative piece the composer closely looks at expectations, behaviors and troubles. The point of the game is to be as close to the audience as possible. In his recent works, the artist has been seeking to integrate the audience in a more and more participative way. It’s a new opportunity to experience/experiment with other forms of relationships between sound environment and viewers’ reception.
– Royaumont Festival   (Paris, Irène Filiberti, August 2015)

Awards:
Finalist of the Dance Élargie International Competition (Seoul, South Korea, 2016)

Concept, music, text, scenography: Jerzy Bielski
Dance collaboration: Sandra Abouav (FR)
Music collaboration: Stopcontact (NL)
Performers: Sabine Rivière, Panos Iliopoulos, S. Abouav, J. Bielski

Manipulation by mainstream media, large corporations and politicians and its influence on our daily lives. The subject of this piece is tackled by the use of misleading information, contradictory messages (experimenting with sound and optical illusion) and turning the audience's attention to their own senses, with the aim of making them sharper and more attentive in the end. The full scale, an hour long interdisciplinary piece for video, MIDI programmed organ(s) and stage performance will comprise of dramatised scenes, video and live electronics.

Highly engaging and entertaining, requiring a lot of precision and involvement from all the performers, with the active audience participation - the piece will also aim at exposing the hidden ways used by news programs as well as advertising and political campaigns (diverting the general public/audiences’ attention away from the real problems, focusing it on something else, or even ‘manufacturing’ the information for their own purposes). This will be achieved by exploring the sound and optical illusion in a creative way, using sound sources not visible to the audience, Busy Drone and the Sauer organ playing ‘by themselves’, performing silently, having blurred boundaries between what’s ‘real’ and what’s ‘not real’, what’s live and what’s being played back from ‘tape’ (or pre-programmed on a computer), who or what is making the sound in the given moment or where it’s coming from, etc...

Concept, music, text, movement, video: Jerzy Bielski
Organ: Jacob Lekkerkerker
Organ/Live Electronics: Panos Iliopoulos
Voice/movement: Erwin Dörr, Marieke Dermul
Video: Igor C. Silva
Video/Lights: Felix de Bousies

Based on the myth of Tristan and Isolde itself and not so much on its adaptation by Wagner or Lang. Using different colours of male and female voices, experimenting with them, however, always keeping in mind the main subject of the piece, which is love, with all the obstacles and the tragic context of the original story.

Exploring the possibilities of voice (sung and spoken, using different sounds modulated in mouth, syllables and extended techniques) plays a big role in the performance. Percussion and live electronics (live processing, live sampling, pre-recorded voices and other sounds) accompany that, creating a background, counterpoint, as well as relating in different ways to the main action.

Concept, direction, music, scenography, costumes: Jerzy Bielski
Voice/movement: Ine Claes, Vincent van Woerkom, Jerzy Bielski
Percussion: Tristan Renfrow
Live Electronics: Igor C. Silva

"(…) the influence of avant-garde sound poems is evident in the two pieces Up and Down. The soprano rolls r’s, slides over a variety of sounds lie ‘aa’, ‘oo’, and ‘e’. Singers rasp g’s, grumble ‘w, rr, z, ź, g, b, c, k, dż, pff, czsz’ and breathe out their last breath. Bielski searches for a different language in the singing voice, one that is not based on the understandability of words.

But Bielski’s work also refers to innovator Antonin Artaud who aimed at removing textual and psychological drama from theatre and replacing it with new aspects, such as movement, colour, light, sound, music–what can be felt but not really expressed. Bielski’s symbolism is based on similar thinking. Everything is a foil for something else as he pairs vertical and horizontal lines and movements, standing up and lying down, a single note and rapid downward runs, horizontal and vertical handling of instruments. He also enforces unusual playing techniques as hands move from left to right, up or down. All these elements add hidden meaning to the overall narrative until it becomes a ritual or the snippet of a story, depending on the interpretation of the listener/viewer."
– Jan Nieuwenhuis (Program Notes)

(...) strong was the diptych "Up" and "Down" by Jerzy Bielski: a dramatic oratorio cut loose from language and meaning. Both parts condition clever mirror effects, but rapture was mainly because of the exciting interaction between the soprano and the instrumentalists.
– NRC (Joep Stapel, 12 September 2016)

A nice contrast (...) with the crazy, energetic pieces "Up" and "Down" by the Polish composer Jerzy Bielski (1984). His approach is distinctly theatrical.
– Culuurpers (Utrecht, Thea Derks, September 10, 2016)

Music, movement: Jerzy Bielski
Conductor: Manoj Kamps
Soprano: Sterre Konijn
Male voices: Arnout Lems, Maciej Straburzyński, Steven van Gils
Fujara: Raphaela Danksagmüller

Dark story of Frankenstein invented by Mary Shelley, an English writer of the romantic period, became an inspiration for Mateusz Pakuła to write a brand new play. It is a strange catalog of characters, who share a common denominator – they all have been created by human being. Beside Frankenstein’s Monster an author recalls Pinocchio and genetically programmed Eve, and throws them into a surreal meeting. Their therapeutic – music - session develops into a manifesto of ideas and views on the contemporary conditions of humanity, the limits of interference in the nature, value of social relations and political systems. The creators of the show refer to the traditions of the drama of the twentieth century, but also use elements of puppet theater, musical experimentation and mixing of the conventions, inviting viewers to the world of original forms and undiscovered sounds.

(...) the authors managed to create something in between a theatre performance and a concert, in which not only a spooky atmosphere, humor (...) but also some ghastly music has its place. And what music that is! Wildly played on everything, which could be brought to a theater (buckets, chains, pipes, bowls, tin boxes, car’s guts, etc. etc.). The effect is great – this anarchist cacophony not only can be listened to but one indeed wants to do it. This, considering the set of bizarre contraptions, really sounds good. From the sort of a punk mantra, in which the peculiar company sings out, quite nicely, a protest song against a bad judgment of matter's lifelessness, all the way to a perverse bossanova about an almost broken tooth (music and instruments’ design – Jerzy Bielski).

(...) music put together using bizarre instrumentations keeps up to the level.

It's a real musical anarchy. Tugging chains in a tin bowl is so suggestive that you would like to try to tug yourself. The impression is even greater when this is done by a peculiar gallery of corpses from the club of Frankenstein. However, "The Monstrum Band" is by no means just an ominous rock-punk concert and the conventions’ game. It's definitely more than that.
– Gazeta Wyborcza (Monika Żmijewska, November 27, 2016)

Stage direction: Robert Drobniuch
Music, sound installations/instruments design, performers' coaching: Jerzy Bielski
Text: Mateusz Pakuła
Scenography: Jan Polivka
Costumes: Karolina Maksimowicz
Stage Movement: Karolina Garbacik
Dramaturgical collaboration: Tomasz Damulewicz
Scenography Assistant: Kamil Dziedzic
Performers: Dagmara Sowa, Paweł Chomczyk, Błażej Twarowski, Andrzej Kuba Sielski

A mime-musictheatre-trhiller

Imagine: you're wandering around a somewhat wasted, old school terrain. A child signals you to approach. It brings your ear to a pipe and you hear strange voice sounds of a singing class. Through a peephole in a curtain you see an adult group in school uniforms. While you watch them doing a strange ritual, the child whispers in your ear:

Twenty years ago this class had a teacher.
Mrs. Price
One day she disappeared and never came back
The class stayed. They can't go, they are trapped.
Some think mrs Price has gone to a better world and they think they will go there too if they do exactly as she did.
But I think mrs Price disappeared
I think one of them that killed her
Come, there is a secret entrance, I can get you inside...

The moment you've entered the door, the children lock it behind you and run away laughing. You sit down on a schoolbench and find yourself in an oppressing atmosphere, kind of like a dream. The class does a daily school routine that doesn't stop. There seems to be a system that is very organised: everyone has its' fixed place, task and function in the group.But slowly small cracks appear in the machinerie. There are group members that dream of change. That secretly, when no one is watching, dance. That observe the windows closely in order to find a way out. That touch the things mrs Price left behind and dress themselves as her. But the group is very strict and force everyone back into the system. Even after a big shock or change all group members bounce back like puppets on a spiral spring. Nothing is said out loud, everything is concealed. But what happens when the tension becomes unbearable? If the lobsters find out they are slowly being cooked to death?

Concept & stage direction: Sjoeke-Marije Wallendal
Music, sounds concept, instruments: Jerzy Bielski
Scenography & costumes: Sjoeke-Marije Wallendal
Performers: Jerzy Bielski, Panos Iliopoulos, Eva Kijlstra, Anna van Diepen, Mervyn Groot, Aline Combe

Wearing skin-tight playsuits, Aloun Marchal and Henrique Furtado weigh each other up, stare at each other, stand firm in the middle of the stage and let out a cry from deep inside : the challenge is laid down. Face to face, close to each other, conniving and provoking at the same time, they are getting ready. They explore a wide range of sounds and movements with clashing styles, from sports fighting to teasing childish games, from rumbling noises to lullabies, from straightforward breathing to bestial yelling. Progressive mechanisms drive the performers even further into their exercise, moving disjointedly and opening their throats more and more. The pas de deux glides from controlled violence to sensuality, which are both disturbingly based on listening, mimicry and exchange of movements. Progressively, voices and faces, laughing and cruel, get tangled, mixed up and rival each other. Henrique
Furtado and Aloun Marchal are ready, at last…

Concept, creation: Aloun Marchal, Henrique Furtado
Music collaboration: Jerzy Bielski
Dramaturgy: Céline Cartillier
Scenography, costumes: Camille Rosa, Rozenn Lamand
Performers: Aloun Marchal, Henrique Furtado