Caution : This performance includes periods of loud noise, nudity, flashes of profanity and high winds.
About A response to the slow motion accident we find ourselves in, This ritual attempts to alter reality with wind, gods, gangsters, seven keys and seven locks.
The evening begins as a performance, and ends as an experiment. Is it possible, we wonder, to respond to the massive collective violence we are witnessing, where living systems are collapsing and opulence and scarcity are peaking, at the level of urgency we would a fast-motion threat: a car crash, a fire, an attack? What is it about the slow-motion accident that escapes our defense response? We offer a ritual to reset our nervous systems collectively.
Evoking imagery of still life in turbulence (St. John the Baptist, Al Capone, industrial culture), we look at, into, and beyond dismemberment and wounds, putting ourselves back together as many-armed chimeras capable of healing and resilience.
Created and Performed by Erin Robinsong and Andréa de Keijzer Original score by Cosmo Sheldrake Supported by a creation residency at Artscape Youngplace Duration 60 mins
Critical Response
“This Ritual is not an Accident enacts a beautiful enquiry. Like scurvy, which can cause the long-healed and forgotten wounds of ship-bound mariners to open again, de Keijzer and Robinsong play games with time. Memories are unclamped. Histories are served alive, freshly shucked. Unoxidised narratives are revealed. But so gracefully are we challenged to reconsider our familiar relations with the unknown, that our mariners’ wounds are not left open. de Keijzer and Robinsong do more than scurvy could ever do, and deftly weave a suture to leave us looking forward to tomorrow. ”
— Roddy Rubrique, Editor; Analogue Island News, Professor Emeritus in Performance and Criticism, Vencel College of the Performing Arts, Hungary.
— Lynda Raino, Choreographer and Founding Director, Lynda Raino Dance
“A leaf blower stirs up a whining tornado. Grapes roll across the stage like tumbleweed. Ripe pears lurch, thud, and bruise at the feet of the audience. Fifty balloons are popped in slow motion. This Ritual is not an Accident dances along fault lines, defibrillating dying questions and startling audiences into ceremony. A stunning invention. ”
— Perceval Spöre, Director and Author of Anatomies of Perversion, and Celibate Imaginations
