New Baltic Dance’18: Vilma Pitrinaitė / We cie (Belgium/Lithuania/France)

  • Date: 12 May 2018 21:00
  • Place: Arts Printing House, Pocket hall, Siltadarzio 6, Vilnius
  • Premiere: 2018
  • Duration: 50'

Somaholidays (PREMIERE)

Concept: Vilma Pitrinaitė

Choreographed and performed by: Mantas Stabačinskas, Darius Algis Stankevičius, Vilma Pitrinaitė

Music: Arūnas Periokas

Dramaturgy and costumes: Rūta Junevičiūtė

Lighting design and video projections: Vladimiras Šerstobojevas/Fanny Perreau

Outside eye: Thomas Pondevie

Supported by: Agence Culturelle d’Alsace, Charleroi danse Centre Chorégraphique de la Fédération Wallonie-Bruxelles, DRAC Languedoc – Roussillon – Midi-Pyrénées, Lithuanian Council for Culture, Ministry of Culture of the Republic of Lithuania

We would like to thank the residencies of the project: Charleroi Danse Centre Chorégraphique de la Fédération Wallonie-Bruxelles, Foyer à Marminiac, Kaunas Artists’ House, Kaunas Chamber Theatre, La Pépinière d’artistes Ville de Strasbourg, Tanzhaus Zürich

Premiere: 2018

Duration: 50′

And if ever, anything unpleasant should somehow happen – why, there is always soma to give us a holiday from the facts. (Aldous Huxley “Brave New World”)

On an assembly line on 120 beats per minute, three dancers from different generations examine the theme of escapism. The home-made movies from touristic trips are mixed with dance club rituals in search for means to enter a state of somaholidays as described in the dystopian novel Brave New World by Aldous Huxley – an artificially induced catharsis, a threshold to more real reality without guilt, shame or civic accountability.

Vilma Pitrinaitė (LT/BE) is a Brussels-based dancer, performer and choreographer, a co-founder and art director of independent dance and theatre company We cie. She has started her dancing career in Kaunas dance theatre Aura, and has studied choreography at CDC Toulouse and Ex.e.r.ce at CCN Montpellier, also theatre directing at École de Théâtre National de Strasbourg.

The first project by We cie is staged at festival JT14, Théâtre de la Cité Internationale, Paris and festival Premières, Maillon, Strasbourg. Her solo Miss Lithuania premiered in New Baltic Dance Festival 2014, and was presented in Aerowaves Spring Forward festival among others, nominated as the best act of the season in Confluences theatre, Paris. In 2016 she returned to Aura as a choreographer of the dance piece Pandora. Recently, she has been working on a duo performance Match together with American choreographer Emily Gastineau (part of Fillimit and Atlas/Impulstanz young choreographers’ networks). Vilma is now mostly interested in the topics of identity, anxiety, Internet as folk art and the meme culture.

Mantas Stabačinskas (LT) is an award-winning dancer and choreographer who has been nominated for the Lithuanian National Prize for Culture and Arts in 2017. Former long-time member of Kaunas dance theatre Aura, an alumni of the Lithuanian Academy of Music and Theatre, Mantas has been working with many famous choreographers and theatre directors from Lithuania and abroad, such as Birutė Banevičiūtė, Lora Juodkaitė, Birutė Letukaitė, Aira Naginevičiūtė, Johannes Wieland, Annie Vignier and Franckas Apartet, Artūras Areima, Jonas Vaitkus among others.

He has collaborated with choreographers from the US, Germany, England, Israel, Canada, Finland and Austria. As a visiting lecturer, he has been teaching at Middlesex University, London. M. Stabačinskas was awarded the most prestigious Lithuanian Theatre award – the Golden Sctage Cross – as the best dancer in 2013, whilst the dance piece Contemporary?, created by him together with a collective Stage Strangers has won in the category of a Phenomenon of a Year in 2014.  His contemporary dance duo with Marius Pinigis – ID: D&G – has been awarded the Kaunas city theatre prize in 2016.

Darius Algis Stankevičius is a London-based dancer and choreographer. He performed within the Aura dance company from 1991 to 2004, representing Lithuania’s contemporary dance in 27 foreign countries (Austria, UK, Greece, Canada, France, Russia, Finland, Sweden, Germany and so forth), during more than 162 festivals. In 2000 and 2001, he worked for international projects Rose ist eine Rose and Soung, Tanz Braunschweig and Une Reine, Reste Une Reine, Mafada, Zurich. In 2004, he created the piece Thief ‘s Journal for Aura and retired from his dancing career. He returned only recently, with a solo He Lived Next Door made for him by Ieva Kuniskis in London.