TALES OF THE BODILESS
Musical Fiction Without Science

…How can you get off your body?… you are not riding a body, isn't it? It might be possible to get off the body…but how or by what are you transported then?

Can you leave it for a while? Can you take a vacation from your body? … how long can you stay out of yourself …without losing it all together…

A composition of voices, sounds, lights and space that evolves in four tales about bodilessness, TALES OF THE BODILESS explore a condition that is hard to imagine before you experience it: a world without human bodies. Once humans are a past, and hence, no longer central, the world is made vacant for fantasies about nonhuman forms of existence. Four landscapes of sensations and cognitions, of sinking and dissolving, of neurosis and aggression, of joy and expansion, of explosion and dissipation.

A bodiless world requires that theater send its proper body – the stage – on vacation. This entails that the theatrical regime of senses and faculties in this performance is unsettled: listening battles vision and sight. The spectators' bodies remain a rare live presence that gives duration to the fictions they inhabit.


Direction Eszter Salamon Concept, text and composition Eszter Salamon & Bojana Cvejić Music Cédric Dambrain & Terre Thaemlitz Musical advisor Berno Odo Polzer Sound design Peter Böhm Light and image design Sylvie Garot  Video control and image design assistant Bertrand Schacre  Voice recordings Bart Aga Perfume Creation Laurent-David Garnier Technical direction Thalie Lurault  Choir coach David Helbich Bodies Saša Asentić, Eszter Salamon Production and Organisation Alexandra Wellensiek /Botschaft Gbr, extrapole/Agnès Henry Assistant organization Mariane Cosserat Internship production Natacha Le Duff Internship video
Sarah Bahr Coordination of publication Tom Engels Coproductions
Kunstenfestivaldesarts (Brussels), Ircam/Les Spectacles vivants-Centre Pompidou (Paris), Hebbel am Ufer/Tanz im August 2011 (Berlin), Pact Zollverein (Essen), steirischer herbst festival (Graz), Kampnagel (Hamburg), Les Subsistances (Lyon), NXTSTP, with the support of the Culture Programme of the European Union, Fonds SACD Musique de Scène With the support of Kaaitheater (Brussels), Kunstencentrum Buda (Kortrijk), Q-02 (Brussels), PAF (Saint-Erme), 6M1L project - Centre Chorégraphique National de Montpellier Languedoc-Roussillon. Centre Chorégraphique National de Rillieux-la-Pape Funded by The German Federal Cultural Foundation Thanks to Charleroi/Danses (Brussels) for the studio residency programme, Eleanor Bauer, Floris Deerenberg, Jefta van Dinther, Juan Dominguez, Marcus Doverud, La Fonderie-Le Mans, Hungarian Culture Bruxelles, Gérald Kurdian, Mathilde Maillard & Cinzia Maroni / Drop Prod, Perrine En Morceaux, P.A.R.T.S., Tom Pauwels and Jan Ritsema



Voices in the order of appearance

Prologue
Eszter Salamon

The Bog
Johan Leysen

Dogs
Jan Ritsema, Eszter Salamon, Saša Asentić, Bojana Cvejić

Substitution
Saša Asentić, Joanna Bailie, Terre Thaemlitz, Tracee Westmoreland, Chrysa Parkinson, Gérald Kurdian, Michael Schmid, Ragna Aurich, Eleanor Bauer, Polina Akhmetzyanova, Sayaka Kaiwa, Bérengère Bodin, Patricia Barakat

Dots
David Helbich, Sofie Benoot, Daniel Blanga Gubbay, Boglárka Börcsök, Saskia Bovijn, Claire Bringiers, Johanna Buys, Kurijn Buys, Pierre Caillet, Erwin Carlier, Chris Carroll, Michael Casey, Liesbeth De Ceulaer, Marie Cordonier, Céline David, Kim Lien Dessault, Caroline Dewynter, Anne Duquenne, Katrien Feyaerts, Elisabeth Franken, Nada Gambier, Nestor Garcia Diaz, Julie Gilbert, Rina Govers, Anne Rose Goet, Eva De Grave, Catherine Herman, Matthias Koole, Aurore Labrosse, Giulietta Laki, Christophe Meierhans, Pierre-Guillaume Méon, Natasha Mokrane, Sylvie van Molle, Muna Mussie, Sandy Napier, Anne-Sophie Van Neste, Tim Oliphant, Tiziana Penna, Agnès Peter, Jo Reymen, Anna Rispoli, Margot van Scharen, Michael Schmid, Christine De Smedt, Janne Steenbeke, Gunhild Tuschen, Anne-Sophie van Wesemael, Tracee Westmoreland, Iffy Tillieu, Wim Veys, Adva Zakai