Streams and Mountains                                         

Performed in the National Gallery of Scotland as a part of the 119th Annual SSA exhibition Edinburgh, Scotland. Dionysus Lives is a piece created with the artist collective La Malle des Indes

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Dionysus Lives is a parade version of Dionysus Rites to Rave in which the Bacchae arrive to new a city, like the followers of Dionysus in the original Euripides play.

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The parade-performance embodies a research into diverse dance forms, sacred music, and oral tradition, for building an interaction with the audience. The aim of the parade is to help the audience find the wildness within themselves: an ancient connection to the land, to music, wine and dance, in a contemporary Dionysian celebration!

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How can we celebrate Dionysus in 2016? How is our neglect of the wild within ourselves mirrored in our treatment of our environment? How can we rediscover the ancient mysticism of partying? To answer these questions our celebration aims to shatter frontiers. Animals, long-extinct, make their re-appearances.

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The parade began in a forested area on the banks of the Water of Leith: In the middle of this setting, the performers were inert in their animal costumes. Slowly, they awoke, gather and started marching. All of the parade was live-streamed on a screen at the Scottish National Gallery, inside of which the final act of the performance took place.

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To read press about it, go here and here. To see the original live-streaming recording (videography by Davor Marenjak), click here.

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“These rites are not for you to hear,

but they are worth knowing”

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- Dionysus, The Bacchae, Euripides

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