eternal return
Eternal Return is a strange ride. Imagine being able to view your entire life from any vantage point. What if you could observe your older self through the eyes of your youth or watch yourself from the perspective of a houseplant in the dusty corner of your childhood living room? This performance dives into the topic of alternate perspectives of life from a place of humor and great seriousness. Set in an otherworldly waiting room, we watch as one deals with trials and tribulations of a predetermined experience. In this uncanny space, a story unfolds and refolds in on itself stumbling through an ineffable existence from multiple viewpoints. Thar Be Dragons’ production, Eternal Return is a full-length evening work drawing inspiration from concepts of eternal recurrence, a concept that the universe and all existence and energy has been recurring, and will continue to recur, in a self-similar form an infinite number of times across infinite time or space. This philosophical science fiction focuses on bending the perception of time by warping everyday movement into extreme physical states to expose deeper layers of the psyche.
Direction and concept: Annamari Keskinen
Performance: Ryan Mason, Annamari Keskinen, Meriheini Luoto
Music composition and sound design: Meriheini Luoto
Text: Annamari Keskinen, Ryan Mason
Sound design: Kaj Mäki-Ullakko
Light design:Jukka Huitila
Set design: Aino Koski
Production: Jojo Oulun Tanssin Keskus, Thar Be Dragons
Supported by: Arts Promotion Centre Finland, Alfred Kordelin
Foundation, Jenny and Antti Wihuri Foundation, Dance All Year
Long, Shawbrook Dance, Tanssin talo
tickets will be available in june 2022.
Thar Be Dragons is a platform for theatrical dance research, education, and performance, created by Annamari Keskinen (FI) and Ryan Mason (USA) in 2018. Here, both choreographers bring their professional experience and individual artistic vision into collaboration. Their work explores notions of subconscious communication, revealing dense and sometimes unseen intimacy between the layers of our inner landscapes. Their staged work shifts between rapid changes of mood, sustained states of tension, and layered imagery, often encircling themes of death, the unknowable, the paradoxical, borders, silence, light, the mystical, and the quotidian. Thar Be Dragons presented their first full-length work, Dying Animals Don’t Feel Sorry For Themselves at the Kaiku Club in Helsinki in 2018. They have been commissioned to create work for the Staatstheater Kassel, Staatstheater Braunschweig, and Hubbard Street Pro.
tharbedragons.org