The premiere will take place on September 23 at Kablys Cultural Bar.
Bewilderment holds the wild within it. It begins when the body loses its bearings and the coordinates that keep us oriented fail. It is a state of getting lost, of confusion and, paradoxically, heightened attention at the same time. It is close to astonishment, which, as a state and a concept, originally meant being knocked out by a stone. Under such conditions, a winding yet clear path leads into the woods – into a space where it is no longer clear where we are or where to go, and which, precisely because of this, may generate alternative ways of perceiving, moving, and finding our way.
ABRAXAS is a dance performance inspired by Bronius Kutavičius’s monumental 1978 composition The Last Pagan Rites (Paskutinės pagonių apeigos). Its architecture is built on the polyphonic interplay of choir, organ, and horn, and on a ritual world inhabited by the grasshopper, the oak, the viper, and the mountain. The wild and the forest are not a backdrop to the work, but part of its very fabric. In ABRAXAS, bewilderment becomes a physical and perceptual practice: bodies fall, lose their direction, and movement does not always lead forward; it can drift, collapse, tilt, spin, or move against itself.
Here, Kutavičius’s music becomes a vehicle for entering a world that resists fixed coordinates and stable hierarchies, and that may give rise to a transindividual form of togetherness. It opens a space of blurred directions and shifting relations, moving against colonial ways of knowing, naming, and conquering. Choreographer Paweł Sakowicz is interested in the tension between the structure of ritual and corporeality, between form and disintegration. Together with three dancers – Oxana Grazniova, Ieva Navickaite, and Eivinas Dziena – he explores the conditions under which bodies can coexist in unstable, dynamic and bewildered relations, and what kinds of movement might emerge from losing one’s bearings.
TEAM
Choreographer Paweł Sakowicz
Dramaturg Anka Herbut
Composers: Agnė Matulevičiūtė, Bronius Kutavičius („Paskutinės pagonių apeigos“, 1978)
Costume designer Elena Marija Veleckaitė
Gaffer Julius Kuršis
Dancers: Oksana Griaznova, Ieva Navickaitė, Eivinas Dziena
Producer Rusnė Kregždaitė
Executive Producer Greta Senkutė
Head of Communications Rasa Kregždaitė
Graphic Designer Sofija Laurušonytė
Photographer Kęstutis Žilionis
Head of Technical Implementation Vladislav Bajaznyj
Producer MMLAB teatras
Co-producers: Sapiegų rūmai, Komuna Warszawa (Poland), Studio Hrdnu (Czech Republic)
Partners: Cultural Bar “Kablys”, Polish Institute in Vilnius, the Embassy of the Republic of Lithuania in Singapore,
the Embassy of the Republic of Lithuania in Poland, the Embassy of the Republic of Lithuania in Czech Republic.