ABOUT THE

PERFORMANCE

The performance will bring together on stage 14 body painted international dancers, Norwegian contemporary composer Tine Surel Lange and master of bodypainting illusion Johannes Stoetter performing live. In the creation process of the show there will be 5 more body painters, 2 filmmakers, 2 digital and visual artists, a scenographer, a documentary filmmaker, a light designer, live streaming technical team, and a production team. 

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The performance is going to happen on an open stage near the sea. The stage architecture and scenography are designed by Auguste Marcinkute. Composer Tine Surel Lange will compose and create live and electronic sounds and perform them on stage. On the screens installed in the back, front and sides of the stage there will be projections of videos and 3D effects, as well as a live streaming of the performance. 

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The story is divided into 8 chapters, each part involves different groups of dancers and different visual material, all with the original sound composed for the performance. All 14 dancers will perform as a big group or in smaller groups or solo, depending on the chapter. Each dancer will be body painted in an unique way.

Water story 

Water is the most transformative element - it easily changes from steam to liquid and then to ice, it melts, evaporates and keeps transforming in the unbroken cycle. Water is life - as long as we don't stop its continuous flow - it will keep our planet and us alive.

The closest companion of the water is the Moon. Ocean, that gathers most of the water on Earth, is inseparably connected with the Moon and influenced by its phases. We decided to divide our story into 8 chapters - as the 8 periods of the Moon.

Starting from the image of a mysterious cloud and a single water drop, we fall into a rapid waterfall, to find ourselves in the flow of a river, sometimes calm and peaceful, sometimes dynamic and unpredictable. With a growing number of dancers and music rising over the huge and vast ocean, the waves take us across the planet and bring to Antarctic coasts, crushing on the icebergs. A mysterious Ice Creature leads us through the majestic mountains of ice, before we'll slide down back to the underwater world. In the darkness, lightning in UV, there are the most fascinating colorful animals - we will watch live the process of illusionary body painting. The dry land awaits us with the experience of heat and lack of water - is there a way to awake the planet to bring back the flow? Do we still have time to awake ourselves?

About the creation

Vilija Vitkute and Małgorzata Suś met for the first time in July 2017 to create a body painting and dance show for the AgitAgueda Festival in Portugal. The artists discovered a common interest in the topics of nature and the environment, and a great creative connection and understanding of each other's artistic language. 

Since 2017 Vilija and Małgorzata have created several projects, such as film and photography series BE WATER (2018), and dance body painting performance for Menuo Juodaragis Festival in Lithuania, in collaboration with musician Andrius Mamontovas (2018). Andrius had been involved in the creation of the idea and script of “The Memory of Water”. 

First phase of “The Memory of Water” creation process started in Nida (Lithuania) in September 2019, supported by the program Neringa culture capital in Lithuania program for 2021, in the residential space of Nida Art Colony. The artists went through the research and discussions to come up with the vision and plan of the future performance. In 2019 and 2020 the main creators have been working constantly on developing the project script, gathering the artists team, researching about water in Baltic and Nordic regions, finding more financial support for the project to make it happen in the best quality.

“The Memory of Water” brings together different art disciplines and creates a colorful fusion of sound, dance and body painting, expressed in live stage performance and in video projections. The  creation process is for now planned for summer 2021. The project authors have gathered a team of best international dancers, mainly from Baltic and Nordic countries, international body painters, Swedish and Lithuanian filmmakers, Swedish digital and light artists, and a Lithuanian scenographer. 

Project partners