We are currently thinking about how to adapt an existing text. How to honour a dead writer’s masterpiece faithfully, while knowing that our allegiance is to the play we are creating and not just to the source material.

We are also thinking about how dance fits into our current project. As Paradosso as a whole.

Which leads us- nicely- to Pina Bauch. Above is a scene from her choreographed Orfeu e Eurydice. 

The myth of Orpheus, though it has been told many ways, is primarily about an artist and art’s capacity to transcend. The heroic poet-musician Orpheus, after losing his wife, Eurydice, calms the deities of the Underworld with his lyre playing and singing. They permit him to lead her back to the world of the living. After he loses her a second time, he goes on invoking her. And, as many treatments show, his art continues after his death.

This is Pina’s version – she totally rips apart the original -even to the point of changing the Opera’s ending- and creates something beautiful.   After the final aria, Orpheus’s Lament, he dies. And it’s stunning.

Unfortunately, we aren’t Pina.  But we will try!