Game Over (2016)

It’s been a century since writer who created the rules of games with imagination Julio Cortázar was born.

Inspired by the author, Urban Dance Theatre Low Air presents an innovative live dance installation which connects both visual and dance art.

The performance revolves around game perspective, inviting the audience to witness the collision of reality and dreams. Spectator feels as in particular situation, considers relationship with others and themselves.

Subtle feelings interfere with fiction and magic, while becoming inevitable element of movement and view.

Cortázar has this magical realism which inspired artists’ imagination for a long time.

Writer’s stories particularly vivid, and they have become a map for our motion and choreography, along with the possible storyline for the dream and reality.

For this piece young professionals have teamed – set designer Lauryna Liepaite, lighting designer Povilas Laurinaitis, musician Adas Gecevicius, dancers Airida Gudaite and Laurynas Zakevicius. Though everyone worked as directors and choreographers during creative process, on the stage we see just two dancers and live music show.

Information

Premiere: 2016

Duration: 50’

Idea: Lauryna Liepaitė, Airida Gudaitė, Laurynas Žakevičius

Choreography, performance: Airida Gudaitė, Laurynas Žakevičius

Composer, performance: Adas Gecevičius

Scenography, costume design: Lauryna Liepaitė

Lighting design: Povilas Laurinaitis

Tours

Lithuania (2016-2025)
Ukraine (GogolFest, 2017)
International Contemporary Dance Festival “New Baltic Dance:, Vilnius, 2017
International art festival “Plartforma”, Klaipėda, 2017
International Contemporary Dance Festival “Pėdos”, Anykščiai, 2018
Italiy (Auditoprium Parco Della Musica, 2018)
Israel (Tmuna Theatre, 2018)
China (China tour: Beijing New Dance Festival, 2018)
Germany (Internationale Tanzmesse NRW, 2018)
Bulgaria (One Dance Week festival, 2018)
China (Harbin Grand Theatre, 2018)
Israel (Suzanne Dellal Centre, Lithuanian Story – Culture Festival In Tel-Aviv, 2019)
Austria (Burgenländische Tanztage, 2019)
Sakartvelo (South Caucasus Contemporary Dance & Experimental Art Festival in Tbilisi, 2019)
France (Festival de Danse Cannes, 2019)
South Korea (Seoul International Dance Festival – SIDance 서울세계무용축제, 2021)
Germany (euro-scene Leipzig festival, 2021)
United Kingdom (London, Sadler’s Wells, 2022)

See us live – upcoming performances

Awards and nominations

Awarded with The Golden Stage Cross Award (Best dance piece of the year, 2016)
Awarded with Borisas Dauguvietis Earring for both the successful research and development of a new stage forms connecting urban dance and theatre and for the pedagogical work which changes the face of Lithuanian contemporary dance (2016)
Nominated for the Golden Stage Cross award (Best dancer of the year, 2016)
Awarded by Lithuanian contemporary dance association (Best choreographic work, 2016)

Reviews

"Game Over" with all its rigor and challenges and complete physical commitment is a memorable and moving experience. A real pleasure (sometimes gloomy, disturbing) to watch the pure art of dance from Lithuania!
Donald Hutera, UK dance writer ("The Times", "The Stage"), 2022-11-30
Recommended for those who dream vivid dreams and appreciate visual theater.
Goda Dapšytė, 370, 2017 February #51
Come and enjoy it, because it's a performance that will completely immerse you. Just high flying. It's a game, just accept it.
Marius Giedraitis, 2017- 01-26, spectator thoughts
“Game Over” is perfectly orchestrated, subtle, and presents an innovative interplay of dance, music, and audience interaction. It is a performance that combines evocative power and irony, bodily fatigue and the power of dreams, immersing itself in the world of our lives and the great writer [Julio Cortazar].
Federico Betta, Altroquotidiano, 2018-05-10
Aesthetic, precise, complete. this is a collective work – perhaps this is the secret of the recipe of this work, in which images, sounds and movements form a harmonious unity. With the evocativeness of the images created, this performance is reminiscent of the Castellucci trio, a combination of dance and visual art that created impressions of visions and dreams through unexpected images and penetrated some layer of the subconscious.
Goda Dapšytė, 2017-02-19, dance.lt
No, it wasn't just a contemporary dance performance. It was some kind of Gaspar Noe film, some kind of cosmic mix of urban culture, performance art, contemporary music (performed live on stage with drums, computers, synthesizers, and voices), perfect bodies, sarcasm, suffocating minimalism, self-searching, and a whole lot more.
Dovilė Filmanavičiūtė, 2016-12-28, spectator thoughts
It was amazing – so much passion, sensitivity, physical virtuosity, humor and irony. It was like my dreams of Rene Magritte paintings, computer games and rave parties all rolled into one. As promised, Julio Cortázar was here too.
Olia Zhuk, Dovzhenko Centro (Ukraine) creative director, 2017
Two dancers, gracefully dressed in three squares of light – everything has its place, passes by, drowns… The musical track begins with the ancient sounds of a trumpet and ends with a calm waltz. In the middle, everything is possible. Both in dance and music. The figures of Cortázar's surreal world become real.
Dan Ben Ari, photographer, Tel Aviv, May, 2018
it was a delightful image of paradoxical dreams
H. Šabasevičius, 7md.lt, NR. 3 (1197), 2017-01-20
The movement and music told the story and there was no shortage of words. The live music and minimalist set design perfectly matched everything that was happening on stage.
Unė Kaunaitė, 2017-01-29, spectator thoughts
The choreography of “Game Over” highlights the clash of dream and reality, and also emphasizes the tension between two worlds – personal and external. The dance becomes continuous epileptic convulsions, accompanied by bold and powerful percussion cadences, sounding like a rock concert, spanning the amplitude from the grotesque to the dramatic. The show, which fuses expressive arts (music, dance and theatre), may at first glance resemble the usual French, Spanish or Italian quests for performing arts, but this is Europe and in order to rediscover it, we must pay more attention to the contemporary art scene.
Alessandro Alfieri, Persinsala Teatro, 2018-05-12
Photos made by: Laura Vansevičienė