A Point of No Return is a choreographic weave of sounds that allows the collective memory of its performers unravel from words to tones and stories to abstraction. Covering centuries, the collected literary quotes filter through the performers’ bodies, voices and memories, inducing a fragile composition that meets the alive – and mortal human body. Language and flesh materialise in a continuum, processing stories written and told throughout our time. Told stories overlap, change shape and degenerate like the moribund human species.
The starting point of the performance is the desire to explore the awareness of one’s own death and abstract thinking: abilities that are often understood as specifically bound to humanness. The working group approaches these features as something that cut through the different aspects of human cultures; as factors behind our dominant role in the ecosystem, our relation to other beings, our pains, our art, our religions and our need for glory.
2019
Choreography and performance: Mikko Niemistö, Tuuli Vahtola and Jan Nyberg
Production support: Mad House Helsinki, Köttinspektionen dans Uppsala, Arts Promotion Centre Finland, c.off, Kekäläinen&Company
Photos: Saara Autere
Tuuli Vahtola 