LUSTOPIA, an international co-production between Vilnius City Dance Theatre Low Air (Lithuania) and Silke Z. / Die Metabolisten (Germany), is a dance performance that connects different generations and bodies.

Six dancers from Lithuania and Germany of very different ages, generations, abilities and dance biographies come together to develop this dance performance and fuse contemporary dance and urban styles.

Both as individuals and as a collective, they follow the temptations of pleasureful moments and create an utopian proposal for their unique and shared lust.

Is the topic of lust and pleasure tied to characteristics such as age, gender, body or disability?

Does our gender attribution, age or (dis)ability create shame and insecurity that stand in the way of our utopia?

The project is a playful balancing act between pleasure, obscenity, body shaming and body positivity and intentionally challenges social and political norms and taboos.

LUSTOPIA follows the utopia of a moving fusion of bodies, while searching for lustful freedom. It invites the audience to a unique dance performance experience, that celebrates differences of the individuals and the utopia of a shared body.

The company Silke Z. resistdance – an ever-changing, transdisciplinary space of thought and action – with a focus on dance and performance. The Cologne-based company has been producing and touring nationally and internationally since 1999 and sees itself as a kind of open system that focuses on research into dance performance development, audience encounters and the breaking up of the classical stage space. Under the artistic direction of Silke Z., it observes people, society(s) and their movement processes and shifts. The collaboration of a wide variety of artists, dancers, thinkers, producers, acquisition and office staff makes it possible to examine social and individual movements heterogeneously, looking at them from different perspectives. In this way, transmedial performance and dance theatre pieces are created, which at times question, at times provoke or reflect, and provide impulses for awareness, feeling and thinking.

INFORMATION

Artistic Director: Silke Z.
Choreography: Silke Z., Laurynas Žakevičius, Airida Gudaitė
Dancers: Caroline Simon, Hanna Held, David Winking, Grėtė Vosyliūtė, Dmitrius Andrušanecas, Darius Strankevičius
Light and stage design: Garlef Kesler
Music & sound design: Liam Giles, Laurynas Žakevičius
Costumes: Melina Jusczyk
Management: Hanna Held
Organisation: Rica Hellige
Assistant: Franziska Nagel

Premiere:  2024

The production and dissemination of the performance was partly financed by the Lithuanian Council for Culture and Vilnius City Municipality. The dance performance was also supported by the NRW Landesbüro Freie Darstellende Künste, Kulturamt der Stadt Köln, Ministerium für Kultur und Wissenschaft in Nordrhein-Westfalen, Das nrw landesbuero tanz e. V. Partners of the dance performance are the mental health arts festival “Ryšiai” and the initiative of the Mental Health Ambassadors “Žvelk giliau”. The organiser of the Mental Health Ambassadors project is the Institute of Hygiene. Source of funding – Ministry of Health of the Republic of Lithuania.

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REVIEWS

“What goes down in these times is lust. The desire for life, the desire for another person, no matter who he is. The lightning beam that drives into the soul when you look into another person’s eyes, the blatant desire for what triggers in you more than the mere, already happy feeling of soul kinship. <…> It was necessary to answer whether desire was “bound to certain characteristics such as age, gender, body or disability”. Yes, whether “shame and insecurities caused by gender attribution, age or disability” would stand in the way of a lust utopia.”

Michael S. Zerban, O – Ton, 2023-10-29

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