TERRA, lachaert & d’hanis’ first stage design for The Print Room Dance Company, The Coronet, London.
In the beautiful Victorian playhouse ‘The Coronet’ in London, The Print Room Dance Company brings Hubert Essakow’s choreography, an exploration of the Earth (Terra).
Essakow’s choreography entwines with the spoken text of Nigerian poet and novelist Ben Okri, one of Africa’s foremost contemporary writers.
Renowned French composer and pianist Jean Michel-Bernard has created a filmic sound environment. The music seems to steep through the rock forming stalactites of sound that grow around the moving bodies.
Belgian visual artists Sofie Lachaert and Luc d’Hanis created a theatrical, ephemeral landscape. It’s highly atmospheric, rich in imagery and suggestion. All looks fragile, liable to crumble at any time.
It seems that the six dancers survived some latter-day Pompeian eruption with everything covered with a layer of dust. They fled with suitcases, for a long journey, to their ultimate destination. Every single detail in the set design / scenography has a deeper meaning, different layers.
A collection of seemingly mismatched furniture pile up, semi-buried in rubble; chairs in varying states of decrepitude, a wardrobe, a mirror, an old worn pendulum clock, … underlines the idea of memento mori and the fleeting existence of ourselves and our belongings.
Photos: Zadoc Nava, Sofie Lachaert
