Inspired by The Birds by Aristophanes, a space is envisioned on the border between heaven and earth, hovering (in Italian “sospesi”) between the earthly and heavenly realms.
The stage features large architectural elements that are understood as a further development of space. Like an embrace of the sky that draws all living beings to itself, their souls in constant evolution. In the same way, the audience’s gaze is directed upwards towards the unknown – in search of perfection, which, however, remains only a utopia.
The visionary Flemish artist Hieronymus Bosch serves as a major inspiration. His paintings are filled with beings that are half angel, half insect, half bird, half demon, half human and half dragonfly, hallucinatory figures that exist neither in the earthly nor heavenly realm. Bosch transfigures the chosen souls, ennobles their fall to the earthly world, where they become mud-smeared beetles. He has the courage to show the immaterial evil, the dizziness, the emptiness, the fall of the masks, the grotesque and unnatural visions of an apocalyptic world.
As in Bosch’s paintings, this choreography seeks to illuminate the involuntary metamorphosis that brings with it a sense of liberation – a fall from the celestial sphere, landing not only in the earthly world but further down, right in the heart of the earth among bugs and worms.