Stream OperaVision: Between Two Lights

What happens between the end of one life and what comes next? Is there an in-between space – a moment when we are no longer who we were, but don’t yet know who we will become? Between Two Lights is neither narrative musical theatre nor a classical concert. It is a sensory listening experience. A journey to the edge of existence and back again.

By Huang Ruo, directed by Aïda Gabriëls and Tido Visser, in collaboration with the Netherlands Chamber Choir, Muziektheater Transparant, HERMESensemble and Needcompany.

Between Two Lights

Source of inspiration
Chinese-American composer Huang Ruo found inspiration for this composition in the Heart Sutra, a Buddhist text in which emptiness and form merge into one another. Not abstract mysticism, but a guide to what touches us all: the elusive moment between farewell and beginning.

His personal story
Huang Ruo lost his mother during the pandemic. He returned to his native village and took part in a traditional seven-day mourning ritual, followed by six weeks of “bardo” – a time of transition. Of silence. Of searching. The first notes of this composition arose from that personal loss.

Mantras in movement and sound
Between Two Lights is composed of musical mantras: patterns that not only sound, but can also be felt physically. Sound as a carrier of rhythm, breath and memory. Sixteen singers from the Netherlands Chamber Choir, performer Grace Ellen Barkey and Huang Ruo move through the space. Their sound and bodies resonate, amplified by silence. Voice becomes movement. Emptiness takes shape.

From Friday 26 September, the stream of Between Two Lights can be viewed via the OperaVision website.

O.’s emerging artist: Aïda Gabriëls

Under the direction of Aïda Gabriëls and Tido Visser, the audience is not a spectator, but a participant. Not guided towards an answer, but towards an experience. We move from the outside to the inside, from the personal to the universal and back to what that means for each of us, here and now. Do we dare to look at the moment when everything comes to a standstill? At not knowing. At the emptiness. At what binds us all, but is rarely mentioned.

By combining theatre, dance, contemporary music and opera, Aïda Gabriëls (1993) has devoted herself, during and after her studies in Theatre Studies (Ghent University), to researching and developing a transdisciplinary language through a range of diverse projects.

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