Drip Canon


Artus – National Dance Theatre

DRIP CANON – How ‘s it going, Heraclitus?


Further dates coming soon


coproduction of Artus – Company of Gábor Goda & National Dance Theatre
performance awarded with Lábán Rudolf Prize in 2016




TRAILER




concert – dance – theatre interference


The concert: 

The wavelengths of a tuned, worn-out piano, a melting drop-shaped glacier, the dripping, the hissing steam combine with the flood of voices from a 17-member chorus.

The dance: 

The art of T’ai Chi Ch’uan is a basic element of the performance’s choreography and its spirit as well. The pure, sharp confrontation and balance of rest and flow, qualities in opposition. The state of consciousness of a continuous presence in motion.

The theatre: 

Already at the start, in the 80s, we produced a show inspired by the 131 remaining sentence fragments of Heraclitus, the Greek philosopher who lived around 600 BC. When I began to think about our current “anniversary, period-summarising” performance, it occurred to me that I have been in continuous conversation with Heraclitus for 30 years. I write my sentences and direct my shows, which seem like fragments of an imaginary dialogue spanning decades. Slowly, I was forced to realise the driving force behind this performance had to be the (now conscious) dialogue in process that summarised the others – my talks with Heraclitus in the language of Artus.

Hence, this performance may seem like a single motion, a single voice, a single image under continuous transformation.


Drip canon

Man is a drop, Mankind is an ocean.

Two drops together is only one drop.

One drop can only be a drop separately, on its own.

A drop in the ocean ceases to be a drop, for then only the ocean exists.

Separateness ceases.

Stream of thought 

Thought is like a stream. I squat on the bank and sometimes draw from it. Thought is the water in my hand. Then, I pour it back. Indeed, who has drawn from this water, and who will do so later? They are my companions. My thoughts are not my own. Others think just the same. I know, because I have read my thoughts in books written centuries, millennia ago. They are my companions: Heraclitus, Lao-Tze, Shakespeare, Hamvas, Weöres, Pilinszky, Eco, Mann and many others. I look at the water in my hand, and I think. Thought cannot be preserved. I pour it back into the stream for others to muse upon. The water is not at rest. It is in motion. At times, it evaporates, but it returns. Thoughts have circulated since time immemorial. Sometimes they get stuck in a person. They are expressed.

Gábor Goda


PHOTO GALLERY







CAST


Creator-performers

Tamás Bakó, Márton Debreczeni, Zoltán Mózes, Csilla Nagy, Melinda Virág

Tai Chi Chuan artists

Imre Baranyai, László Gregus, Szilvia Izsák

Musicians

Á la cARTe choir (artistic leader: György Philipp)

Set & Visual designers

Ferenc Sebestyén, Gábor Goda, Bea Gold

Costume designer

Kriszta Lőrincz

Light designer & Co-creator

Gábor Kocsis

Video animation

Gábor Papp, Ágoston Nagy

Video tech

Krisztián Megyeri

Texts from

Heraclitus, Gábor Goda

Composers

György Philipp, László Melis

Production assistant

Anna Fazekas

Production directors

Anna Gáspár, Margit Hodován

Director & Co-creator

Bea Gold

Special thanks to

András Havasi, master of Tai Chi Chuan

Director-coreographer

Gábor Goda

Supported by NKA, EMMI