PROJECT

The Dionysian Portal: a TheaterFestival

“The age of socratic man is past: crown yourselves with ivy, grasp the thyrsus and do not be amazed if tigers and panthers lie down fawning at your feet.” (Nietzsche, The Birth of Tragedy).

After a symposion drenched in wine with a playful discourse about love and friendship, and after the Bacchanal ritual in the forest, poked by mycelium wisdom, diffracting human\nature relations, we are ready to explore a third format to open the Dionysian Portal: a TheaterFestival – Intoxication and Katharsis by Drama only…

What kind of potentials are encoded in the technology of ancient Greek drama?

How can an ecology of ancestral storytelling re-wild contemporary myths of gender at the “end of the world”?

In this immersive exploration, we are becoming devotees of Dionysus. We are falling in love with an inspiring energy, cloaked in mystery and a syncratic cosmology. We are praying every day. Our artistic gesture for these times emerges from this ‘insider’s perspective’, or ‘critical proximity’ if you will, re-connecting us to the roots of who we think we are as western performing artists.

Irina Lavrinovic and Asher Lev

Coming from dance, drama, choreography and visual art, Irina Lavrinovic and Asher Lev live and perform together in their co-created performance works. Their last piece, Ms. 5G & The Respiratory Machine, which premiered during the first lockdown in Belgium (May 2020), is a live online cinematic performance which was performed in their living room and broadcasted via the internet around the world. Their methods of trance dissolve the social and the cultural into a material fluidity that brings the spectator closer to the skin of things, where empty space between atomic particles resonates spirit.

Robert Steijn

NL, MX

Performer, dramaturge, theater maker Robert Steijn started the school of tender thinking/loverhood with Mexican choreographer Ricardo Rubio, , combining spirituality, art and healing practices. Their last project is called “Tunes for the Living” (Mexico city, 2022). Robert considers himself a snake dancer, as he is initiated in the energy of the Oxumare (Sao Paolo, Umbanda). His last dance solo is called “Esoteric dancing” (Vienna, 2021).