Following the success of her impressive dance opera 8: METAMORPHOSIS, Nicole Beutler has created a brand-new musical all-encompassing experience that confronts us with the sweeping changes that lie in wait. GINKGO prompts us to say goodbye to the world as we know it and lets us dance on the garbage heaps of our civilisation, as nostalgic musical pieces, arising from our collective memory, begin to distort and evaporate.
GINKGO was admired as a work in progress in the creative space, O. Lab, at O. 2021. The performance will premiere during O. 2022 in May.
Producer Gary Shepherd and theremin player Dorit Chrysler are composing a poignant swansong. Chrysler’s hands touch the invisible strings, as if she is a mistress of ceremonies leading us to our own demise. The vocalists of the Nederlands Kamerkoor NXT sing their final song. Five dancers perform their very last dance until only the gingko tree remains: the Japanese nut tree that even survived the nuclear explosion in Hiroshima.
Performances such as 8: METAMORPHOSIS (2019) and DIDO DIDO (2017, a collaboration with Silbersee) show that Beutler is a master at shaping a communal process of change, mourning, letting go, and unburdening. She draws the audience into a farewell ritual: a delineated period of reflection on our existence amidst a climate crisis. Once we can face the fact that change is inevitable, there will be space for new perspectives. GINKGO (or: 56 million years ago there were palm trees on the North Pole) is the first performance in the Rituals of Transformation Trilogy. The second performance will show us how nature is going to dominate the ruins of humanity while we will be looking for a positive utopia in Part III: a new equilibrium between nature, animals, humans, and machines.
Always up to date
Sign up for the O. newsletter
Locatie
O. gebruikt haar stad als podium en decor. Veel voorstellingen zijn op onalledaagse en onontdekte locaties in de stad: pleinen, woonkamers, kerken, een oude wasserij, winkel, bovenop de Bijenkorf en zelfs een fitnesscentrum.
