Streams and Mountains                                         

Performance

 

Performed in the Glasgow International Festival as a part of the Circus Between Worlds, in the New Caledonia Road Free Church, Glasgow, Scotland

Dionysus: Rites to Rave is a piece created by the artist collective La Malle des Indes

 

http://www.circusbetweenworlds.org

“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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Dionysus: Rites to Rave is a 10-person performance which is inspired by Euripides’s The Bacchae. The Bacchae tells the story of Pentheus, king of Thebes, who refuses to celebrate the god Dionysus, a heresy that the king will pay for with his own life. As with all Greek tragedies, this piece shows the danger of excess: In this case, Dionysus punishes those, who by an excess of hubris and cold intellect, refuse the part of themselves that is most animal and wild. Dionysus brings sacredness to art, savagery and partying. He joins humans and animals, women and men, rich and poor. He is a god of carnival and liberation, a god of earth and theatre.

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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? This celebration aims to shatter frontiers. Animals, long-extinct, make their re-appearances. These rites embody a research into diverse dance forms, sacred music, oral tradition and into building an interaction with the audience. We wish, not only to discover the wild where we are, but to help the audience find the wildness within themselves - an ancient connection to the land, to music, wine and dance that constitutes our contemporary Dionysian celebration!

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