Dalloway
Opera/dance-theatre
Premiered by: Johanna Maria Nylund (Dalloway), Jessica Lyall (Dalloway’s Shadow), Ruth Rebekka Hansen and Stefanos Bizas (Abstractions)
8th March 2020 ;
Pulsar Festival, Copenhagen
Based on the novel ‘Mrs Dalloway’ by Virginia Woolf, set in 3 miniature Acts.
Score currently under revision. Scheduled for release July 2024.
ca. 35 minutes
Dalloway - Premiere, Pulsar Festival 2020; the Royal Danish Academy of Music, Copenhagen.
“You cannot find peace by avoiding life.”
About Dalloway
A fusion between chamber opera and dance theatre. The perception of one character, Mrs Dalloway (soprano), is expressed through multiple viewpoints of the self in the portrayal of three levels of consciousness. Traversing all levels of mind, awareness, thought and consciousness is the Shadow-self (dancer).
The opera/dance-theatre rendition of Woolf's 'Mrs Dalloway' places the main character in a context that has no direct relation to her husband or child. The context of early 20th Century England placed women in a strange midpoint between the ongoing oppression of rights and shifting ideologies to define a life as an individual and not in direct relation to a husband or children. As Dalloway considers her age and new role without these two figures, she begins to feel that her life now lacks meaning and considers death as the only resolution for this blooming and ongoing sense of emptiness.
Preparing all day for a party, memories and desire morph into tangible voices that disturb the conscious mind and lead her to a breaking point. It is here that she sees, through her shadow-self, the layers of oppression that have been self-inflicted over many years in the name of social standing, stability and safety.
Dream-like recollections of her past contrast a starkly concrete present. Memories are disrupted and become a point of gravity in the passing of one single day.
Pictured (front line) left to right - Johanna Maria Nylund, Kirsten Milenko, Jessica Lyall, Ruth Rebekka Hansen, Stefanos Bizas