optais amme: all i am doing is reorganising stardust

ma olen jätkuvalt loomises ja taasloomises

Sofia Filippou

Greece

Performances

31.05.2024 at 18:30
01.06.2024 at 17:00*
02.06.2024 at 17:00
Ungru Castle Ruins
https://maps.app.goo.gl/aLayfyaGymAZd94w6
*with Artist Talk

Author-director SOFIA FILIPPOU (GR)
Sound designer and composer BEN OSBORN (UK/GER)
Scenography and architecture MARI MÖLDRE (EST)
Co-writer MIA TAMME (EST)
Choreographic contaminators PÄÄSU-LIIS KENS (EST), HELINA KARVAK (EST), ELINE SELGIS (EST)
Dramaturgical consultant PAULI PATINEN (FIN)
Video designer INNA TARAKANOVA (EST)
Production assistants INDREK KORNEL (EST) ja LAURA PÕLDMA (EST)

Performers Andreana Ambros, Daili Kruusamägi, Lotta Laureen Loo, Emma Lumi, Kaisa Heleen Lääne, Anette Merisalu, Janina Ruotsalainen, Iris Rämmeld, Agnes Katariina Selirand, Katrin-Liis Seppenen, Emmelgelina Sudovtseva, Annabel Sõlg, Kertu Vähi, Karin Aarelaid, Helen Agu, Polina Albert, Monika Annijerv, Mia Elise Ehasoo, Georg Eller, Merilin Kruberg, Sofia Martila, Elina Ojasaar, Mariann Onkel, Berta Parv, Karmen Teesi Pregel, Maria Schotter, Herta Soro, Lisette Taube, Annabel Vinnal, Laura Lisette Lepvalts, Pääsu-Liis Kens, Helina Karvak, Eline Selgis

Production CPPM Manifestal, Undercurrent OÜ and Estonian Academy of Music and Theatre

Supported by Estonian Cultural Endowment, Tallinn University, TÜ Viljandi Culture Academy

Darkness.                 Yes, the darkness.                      Like an embrace. Delissscious. Protective. Welcoming. Like a falling. The earth. Like a blanket, like a mother. Black. Damp. Then the rain comes, i remember the rain, i remember it on my skinnnnmmmm, she said to the rain. Mmmmm, and they drank it in. i am made and remade, continually. And the rain, a being immersed entirely in listening. i reached out to touch 

the tip of your collarbone and you became 

soil, you became 

soil between my fingers 

-and spores           When was the last time you had spores in your pockets?

optais amme is a site-speciffic choreographic opera installation, involving a cast of 36 performers and the ruins of a castle that stands between becoming and decomposition. Rooted in a legend of love and loss, Ungru lossi varemed stretches into an other-worldy journey that reveals the mythologies found in the interstices. The castle, never completely built, never inhabited by humans, normally met as scenery on the car drive to Haapsalu, becomes the host and protagonist of a multi-sensorial exploration of intercultural/interspecies story-telling. 

“It matters what stories make worlds, what worlds make stories.”
Donna Harraway

what happens when we allow other world-making projects to shape the narratives we use to understand ourselves and our role in the ecosystem? 

This project aims to create a unique space of engagement with the more-than-human world, the environment at large, myth and deep time. An encounter with the stories born when we dance around the cracks in the narratives of our world.

The voice of a weathered piano echoes the secrets of resident stones and spirits. Love songs are decomposing in the soil. Human bodies become landscape, intertwine with creatures and memories of the site, fusing into hybrids, making way for other voices to be heard.

What secret is at stake when one truly listens?

all i am doing is reorganising stardust now now again, bit by bit, spores sleep beneath the darknesssssseeking out embrace, making paths and making life and making mmmmmushrooms and memories. Darknessssyess, the darkness, like an embrace, delissscious, earthy, sheltering, welcoming,  like a falling.

Eternity, a thing worn lightly, a small thing, 

an everyday thing.

Born and raised in Crete, Greece, Sofia Filippou (1995) is a sister, daughter, friend, lover, cross-contaminator, mover, poetess, partly academic, most often art-making human. She mostly makes dances to understand life -sometimes just to enjoy it. She has been investigating ways to be in the world as a body, as an ecosystem, as a dance. Rooted in a desire to cultivate practices of deep sensing, her works are poetic explorations of world-making; worlds that exist at the edge of things. 

The TantsuRuum residency brought her to Estonia in 2020, and she has since then been based in Tallinn. In March 2023, her collaboration with dance artist Eline Selgis, titled ABOUT US// choreographies of hugging, received the Estonian Theater Award for Best Dance Performance 2022. 

Dreaming of tasting the interweaving of known and unknowable, she works with sensing & intuition and follows the body as a main source of wisdom and knowledge. She aims to get bodies into dialogue. She likes bodies; moving bodies, resting bodies, delusional bodies,  bodies of water, bodies of dissonance…She also likes stories, riddles, rolling on the floor, and speaking into a microphone. Sometimes she likes to sing. 

She always likes to dance.