AURORA, a female daemon, awakened from her deep sleep, is asked by the gods to fulfill her destiny, by preparing the ground of the coming of the new era. Her task, like the task of dawn, is to carry the world from the darkness of the night, to the light of the day. During that process which will occur in the duration of 45 minutes, her mouth will unleash words, a broken and diverse text, investigating the source of language, the song, before it became a song, the word before it was a word.
A performance.
Duration : 45 minutes
Concept : Vladimir Nikolouzos
Directed by : Vladimir Nikolouzos
Text : Fernando Pessoa, St John Perse, Vladimir Nikolouzos, S. Coleridge, The Bible, Fiodor Liubimov, Lucretius, St Augustine, Antonin Artaud.
Aurora : Elektra Nikolouzou
Music, Sound Design : Vangelino Currentzis
Set Design : Effie Birba Costumes |: Ianis Chamaylidi
Light Design : Sakis Birbilis
Production : Res Ratio Network, L. Duyko, V. Nikolouzos, Nina Mikhaylyuk, Alma mater Foundation.
PENETRATION INSIDE THE HUMAN INLAND, THROUGH AN AESTHETICALLY BRILLIANT PERFORMANCE.
The stage is dark. In the depth of the stage we can see a half lit, figure of a woman, who gradually wakes up from a deep sleep, she reminds those figures of worn out frescos, on ancient walls. The voice of Elektra Nikolouzou, sounds clear, awakening our imagination, and our emotions. It is the voice of a persona, who wakes up from her lethargic sleep, beginning her existential journey, from darkness to light, a lonely journey inside the corridors of existence in which the body narrates and carries the accumulated experience of life. This journey despite the fact it is held inside a broken past, is willing to look into the future. Aurora as Vladimiros Nikolouzos calls his highly interesting performance, is being inspired by a 16th century book of mystical philosophy, written by Jacob Bohme, and its text that Vladimiros Nikolouzos assembles with spiritual clarity, is a cut up made of words and poems of Fernando Pessoa, S. T Coleridge, Fiodor Liubimov, Antonin Artaud, Lucretius, St Augustine, as well as poems of the director himself.
His silent while on stage heroine, a female daemon in between reality and dream, listening herself to the fragments of her own words, is a messenger who is arriving to remind us the lost faith, and through it to exorcize the stagnation of the modern era.
Elektra Nikolouzou, narrates with her ceremonial movements the rapsody of the miniscule, bringing forward this poetic monologue with devastating clarity, using her own body as a channel to describe what finally lies beyond words. Aurora s body suffers, -dressed in a blood red dress- like an open wound.
In an empty space, filled up with scattered lamps that flicker in a threatening way, wrapped in a thin light, Aurora, is sublimated inside the psychologically intense music of Vangelino Currentzis, and is ultimately passing with success through the various metamorphosis of the role. Until she reaches the point of a dionysian explosion, invocating the verbs of life and ecstasy, in order to reach the level of Catharsis.
Its not easy for someone to enter the vertigo of the human inland, as it s not easy for many to understand this aesthetically brilliant performance. One should leave the senses and the mind free in order to listen to the deep voices of memory, and utterly to penetrate inside the mystical breathing of poetic vision.
BY HELEN PETASSI ( art and theatre Critic )
(NAFTEMPORIKI newspaper)