A dance performance grounded in the soils of Carpathian high altitudes by choreographic duo Dorota Michalak & Alica Minar.
Can dance mend our ties to the land and intimately connect us? LUSH BLAST: Tasting the untamed explores the relations between natural and artificial, wild and domesticated and cultural representations about nature. Tree trunks and limbs, crumbling mountains, vibrating chains. The performers guide the audience through varying atmospheres, from evocative songs to acid humor, asking what remains of the wilderness in and around us. Using their physicalities and voices, they morph their presences in a quest to become something other than human, inviting us into a sensual feast and a cruel battlefield. After spending time in the Carpathian Wilderness, the choreographers want to re-articulate power as a vital force rather than a tool of control.
The project began in the summer of 2022, when, during their first field trip in the Tatras Mountains, they encountered a young bear and an over 800 year old arolla pine. Since then, they keep learning from the old-growth forests and wildlife about what ‘power’ and ‘relation’ mean. They collect local stories about natural disasters, cross-species collaborations and elemental coexistence, human interventions, and the ongoing political struggles for ecological land ‘management’.
