In “MoonJar,” choreographer and performer Kat Válastur and musician Aho Ssan create a poetic interplay of sound and movement that condenses into an intense, almost ceremonial performance. Inspired by ancient creation myths and the materiality of clay, they transform the theater into a resonant vessel.
Within this mythical space, Kat Válastur performs a ritual of renewal. Like an exhumator, she lifts magical ceramic objects that resemble relics and bones, crafted by the ceramist Latika Nehra. Her choreography engages in dialogue with the relics and the sounds they convey, referencing the first inhabitants of the planet. Válastur’s spiral and circular movements trace arcs that echo the cycles of the moon and the helical twists of DNA.
The performance is accompanied by the subtle nuances of Válastur’s singing and a circular, vibrating metal instrument that defines the space of the ritual. Aho Ssan’s immersive soundscape is expanded by contributions from Sam Slater and Jakob Vasak, in which Kat Válastur’s instinctive choreography weaves together the archaic and the contemporary. “MoonJar” becomes a vessel of radical potential for a new and better world.
Choreography, performance and vocals: Kat Válastur /Music, composition: Aho Ssan (featuring Sam Slater & Jakob Vasak) /Ceramic artist:Latika Nehra/Outside eye:Michalis Agelidis & Maria Tzika / Light design & technical direction:Martin Beeretz / Set design:Louis Caspar Schmitt/ Creative producer:Saskia Schoenmaker /Production assistant: Katharina Fischer
A production by Kat Válastur Funded by: the Capital Cultural Fund (Hauptstadtkulturfonds) Coproduced by: HAU Hebbel am Ufer, Fonds Transfabrik—the French-German Fund for the Performing Arts, CTM festival and CCN Centre Chorégraphique National de Grenoble Supported by: the Institut français d’Allemagne as part of the Cité internationale des arts residency program in Paris
…The music of Aho Ssan, who comes from the Parisian underground electronic music scene and studied mathematics, physics, and computer science before turning to experimental music, is very spacey in this piece. it’s how the universe might sound if we could hear it.
Over rumbling, deep basses that stumble and growl, short-lived bursts of sound rise and fade away, droning and thundering, brief and impulsive, with wobbles, trills, and trumpet-like sounds. All the sounds swell up, unstable and fragile, fraying, trembling, and dissolving again, a constant process of becoming and vanishing.
Valastur, the Berlin-based artist from Athens, is an extraordinary artist.. Since 2010, she has been creating exceptional dance pieces in various cycles, guided for more than ten years by mythologies and rituals. Her works are dreamscapes, utopias, or dystopias, often infused with science-fiction elements. In her pieces, the boundaries between reality and fiction blur; time and space dissolve; images, scenes, and identities constantly shift.
…her engagement with archaic images and sounds is always a reflection on our present and our existence: Why do we exist in this way, and what might be possible otherwise?