Dust To Dust

DUST TO DUST – Cabaret Catatonique 

a dystopian anti-cabaret

Date: 15/09/2022
Time: 21.00
Venue: Kostas Tsianos Theatre
Entrance: 2 euros

The Cabaret Catonique group was formed around the idea of creating an anti-cabaret and consists of five musicians, a writer, a choreographer/dancer, and a visual artist who meet on the stage of “Dust to dust” and explore together the moment “before the end”. The group composes and choreographs a contemporary, interdisciplinary black comedy between reality and metaphysics.

“Dust to Dust” is inspired by the unpublished novel by Maria Filippou, in which the protagonist observes the destruction of the world and, as the last survivor, decides to sacrifice herself. She offers her body to the earth and frees her spirit. The eternal female figure, the generative force, who buries/plants her traumas, so that in time they can be reborn/grow as something new and hopeful. The audience witnesses a journey through space and time, the unfulfilled and the conquered, watching her last memories.

Music and dance, speech and images create a musical collage with touches of Bob Fosse and Kurt Weil. The jazz band, or what’s left of it, weaves a maximalist musical landscape inspired by Cole Porter, Alice Coltrane, and greek songwriting. 

In the anti-cabaret stage setting, consisting of video projections and musical instruments, the performing arts meet the end of the world.  

Music and dance, speech and images create a musical collage with touches from Bob Fosse and Kurt Weil. The jazz band, or what’s left of it, weaves a maximalist musical landscape inspired by Cole Porter, Alice Coltrane and Greek songwriting.
In the anti-cabaret setting, consisting of video projections and musical instruments, the performing arts meet the end of the world.

Credits:

Evi Filippou: musical direction, percussion, voice, production. 

Maria Filippou: conception, text, stage direction. 

Naïma Mazic: dance, choreography, kinesiology. 

Natalia Manda: stage design, live visuals.

Lara Alarcón: voice, performance. 

Felix Hauptmann: piano, synthesiser.

Robert Lucaciu: contrabass, voice.

Director’s Note:
The idea of ​​cabaret is an idea that we all secretly flirted with, and which did not find the space and time to express itself. After two years of pandemic and a complete revision of life and future, the initial idea of ​​a performance that will combine speech, dance, music and visual arts was born and then transformed into what we will present as an anti-cabaret.
The journey began with our post-apocalyptic thoughts and inner reflections. The destruction of the world was the occasion and the prophecy, and directed us to the story we chose to tell. Through our personal research and artistic concerns we were led to our protagonist, a woman like all the others, the eternal female figure, the mother, the sister, the friend. The extensive dialogue brought to the surface issues and problems such as harassment, love, climate change, family relationships, liberation from social stereotypes. We also unanimously agreed that even though we decided to deal with a very specific kind of show, we had to change it, reverse it, and bring it into the present day. In other words, to change the perspective of the male gaze and transform it, removing its typical Hollywood pop aesthetic.
One of the guiding principles that determined the course of the project was jazz. Jazz as a genre and a way of thinking, jazz as freedom, as expression without limitations and as purification. From this springboard, both the text and the video projections, as well as the dance, were treated as communicating vessels and carriers of the story, the occasion of which was the last chapter of Maria Filippou’s still unpublished novel. The simplicity of the framework of the original text, gives faint guidelines and acts as a joint to finally connect the thoughts, actions and arts, so that they all work together to unfold a sensory mosaic of memories and stories.

Pre-sale daily 10.00-13.00 at Connectiva, Venizelou 133 Larissa, and at the event site 45 minutes earlier.
Informations: +30 2410531778, +30 6947890412