For his new production, drummer and composer Uriel Barthélémi joins forces with bassoon player Sophie Bernado and hip-hop dancer Salomon Baneck-Asaro to create a special open-air dance and music performance for the festival’s opening. Together, they navigate a stylized map of the world ravaged by centuries of colonialism and forcible modernization—looking for a way out of their apartness. 

Living on different islands and separated by open space and oceans of light, the performers move and play in their own worlds and rhythms. They are accompanied by sharp and radical “digital flashes” representing the predominance of electronic means in today’s social connections. Movement and sound, and not speech, are the performers’ only way of reconnecting to one another.

Rediscovering movements from the recent analog past allows them to tap into forms of primal energy and explore different heritages shattered by the most recent wave of forcible digitalization. Thus, the dancers and musicians “re-find” themselves and one another, constructing fantasy folklores and developing new, non-verbal forms of communication. With the motion of their bodies, they resist the restriction and ablation of thought, speech, and “common” sense that go hand in hand with digital surveillance and the joys of instant online consumption.

Performance: Salomon Baneck-Asaro, Uriel Barthélémi, Sophie Bernado, Yasmine El Baramawy, and Maca (Alexis Fernandez Ferrera)
Concept: Uriel Barthélémi with Sophie Bernado and Salomon Baneck-Asaro
Sound and lighting design: Fred Raby
Advisor: Stéphanie Auberville
Costume designer and stage design adviser: Jennifer Minard

Mediathek

Link

https://2021.steirischerherbst.at/en/program/artists/2094/