Event

'DEATH' (a work in progress)

Incorporating movement, sound, colour and real-time digital media, the piece seeks to be a celebration of life, which without death would be meaningless. It is a study of how Western cultures increasing distancing from, and denial of their relationships with death impacts our lives, and the ways in which the power of ritual a phenomenon usually associated with primitive and/or religious cultures may be worth re-interpreting and re-developing in a modern rational/scientific world.

DEATH will ask if the gradual and inevitable rejection of religious narratives has inadvertently thrown the baby out with the bathwater, leaving us with thin, grey, humanist replacements for the rich, dramatic performances which, for thousands of years, have guided people through their most important experiences; and whether, compared to cultures which actually embraced the prospect of a good death (such as warrior cultures from Ancient Greece to the Samurai that placed strength and honour above personal survival), our lives have actually been impoverished by our refusal to embrace, treasure, or even take pride in our own mortality. By trying to shut out the darkness, has life become colourless?

Company: Marianna Kavallieratos-Dom Bouffard

DEATH (a work in progress) was created in part at The Watermill Center - a laboratory for performance November, 2017.