Missa Mater Sola
A dance performance X choir concert as an ode to female power
Timo Tembuyser (BE)
MISSA MATER SOLA (literally: ‘A mass about the lonely mother; a mass about only the mother’) is a deconstructed choral concert about femininity. A dancer squeezes into and out of the sacred cliché and the normative prison of the Woman-as-Mother. A choir consisting of six sons swarms around her and sings itself into and out of a classical singing idiom. Absent the Father, they deconstruct the patriarchal legacy of the liturgy while trying to find their own adult voice.
The performance is the second mass in a Missa triptych. It follows Missa Homo Sacer that featured at O. 2020 and is an ongoing exploration into the tension between individuals and society. The standards and norms of the Christian liturgy act like a mirror for the society that we still inhabit, unfortunately, which is dominated by discrimination against certain groups. Singing harmony becomes a metaphor for living in harmony. Who is allowed to participate and who isn’t? Harmony becomes a hard-won quality, both in a musical and in a political sense.
