Edythe found some folktales that foreground inanimate objects and animals as main characters. Created in the middle ages there is no moral, or lesson to learn, all one can deduce is that fucked up things happen, and will keep on happening. What stands out is how community is formed in the mean time, ragtag groups of mix and match items like a bean, coal and a piece of straw are on an escape mission, while roosters and lions unite to support a common cause, to bury a hen. They are tales of escape, care and grief, humored by their total absurdity.
3 dancers work somatically using material explorations to embody “inanimate” objects. Working through affect to reconfigure the intimacies between coal, bean and straw, hen and rooster. Centering care, they traverse different emotional states, and undergo elemental changes always dependent on the group for transformation.
Exchanged orally across generations and cultures as merchants carried the tales across countries, each retelling was added to and emended, never static or tied to an individual it came from the collective. The performers work together adding to, restitching and recreating the emotional journeys as their own.
In grief the internal world shatters.
from a whole to many sharp shards. splinters ripe for cutting, reflecting numerous selves.
a whole apple half eaten
“Worm hole (definition 2) - hypothetical connection between widely separated regions of space-time.”
Connecting some future, to some past to our conversation here right now. Our limbs and rocks and carbon and straw, some alien horror and a bean bounces to safety.
bits fall down and get torn up, wet sodden and drowned, caught alight and burst apart, stitched back together cuz all of this belly aching laughter. but still no-one’s able to mend a heart.
“And then everyone was dead” - Folktale 80. Hen and friends
Featuring Reed, with Star and Fox
Made by Edythe Woolley with Kate Williams and ryen heart.
2 Shows: 7pm & 9pm
Tickets
