ShowArchive

HOLOSCENES

Place D'Youville

5:00(without intermission)

Uninterrupted performance


Sun 5 June
17:00
Mon 6 June
21:00
Tue 7 June
21:00
Wed 8 June
21:00
Thu 9 June
21:00
Accès libre
Regular price / FREE Uninterrupted performance / Outdoor show

Early Morning Opera (Los Angeles (United States))

Holoscenes is a major performance installation enacted in an immense rectangular glass box in the centre of the city. We see scenes of daily life: someone reading the newspaper and sipping their coffee, someone else washing the floors and windows, playing the guitar or making their bed. Suddenly the set transforms into a giant aquarium as 13,000 litres of water fill it within minutes, submerging the performers inside. Some of them try, in vain, to ignore the situation or escape, but the majority struggle to adapt to the new reality as best they can.

The piece is a clear poetic interpretation of how climate change may lead to a rapid rise in sea levels. Like the performers, we are adapting little by little in spite of ourselves. The threat is real but, despite scientists’ warnings, it still seems abstract or far off. Or perhaps it is our tremendous capacity for adaptation that is ultimately desensitizing us? The performance, both fascinating and terrifying, makes you viscerally feel the danger, so that it’s no longer just an intellectual exercise. Hold your breath…

Holoscenes is a contemplative, sensory experience with no lines, text or dialogue. The title refers to the current geological era, called the Holocene, which has been going on for 11,000 years now. The uninterrupted performance takes five hours in total, and each new version combines four out of seven segments. Each segment plays with variations on the same theme and lasts about an hour. There is no chronological order within or between segments. It is an open‑access work, free of charge, without any reserved spots.

Video

Learn more about the show

Credits

Created by Early Morning Opera
Conceived & Directed by Lars Jan
Choreographed by Geoff Sobelle
Performed by Benjamin Kamino, Annie Saunders, Emmanuelle Martin & Geoff Sobelle4
Show Control & Lighting Design by Pablo N. Molina
Sound Design by Nathan Ruyle & Mikaal Sulaiman
Sound Engineering by Duncan Woodbury
Costume Design by Irina Kruzhilina
Technical Direction by Eric Lin
Project Management by Christopher Pye
Associate Technical Direction by Jeffrey Morton
Company Management by Alexandria Yalj
Hydraulic Design by Larry McDonald
Automation Design by Erich Bolton
Produced by Early Morning Opera, with Aurora Nova
HOLOSCENES is co-commissioned by the John & Mable Ringling Museum of Art and Yerba Buena Center for the Arts. HOLOSCENES has received generous support from the Surdna Foundation, The Robert Rauschenberg Foundation, The National Endowment for the Arts, The MAP Fund (a program of Creative Capital supported by the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation and the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation), Awesome Without Borders, the Panta Rhea Foundation, the New York State Council on the Arts with support of Governor Andrew Cuomo and the New York State Legislature, and many individual donors.
Additional research and critical residency support has been provided by Scotiabank Nuit Blanche (Toronto), the Experimental Media Performing Arts Center (EMPAC) (Troy, NY), and the Center for the Art of Performance (CAP) UCLA (Los Angeles, CA)

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