Video designer and photographer: Jonatan Salgado Romero
Lighting designer: Marko Mijatović
Sound engineer: David Kent
Performers: Andressa Miyazato (dance) / Alexander Balanescu (violin)
Supported by: City of Linz, Austria
'LULU is a dance-theatre-music monodrama performed by one dancer and one musician, and inspired by Frank Wedekind’s plays Der Erdgeist (The Earth Spirit) and Die Büchse der Pandora (Pandora's Box). Both these plays deal with the human relations, which is why I found it interesting to approach them in the way in which all other characters except Lulu are removed from the concept as live performers. That gave me the opportunity to avoid the narrative retelling of Wedekind's plays and explore only the main protagonist and her inner experiences, which I then turned into poetic images in order to reach the universality of interpretation and touch the archetypes of behaviour and experiences stored in every human being.
Wedekind’s Lulu fascinates me with the multidimensional tragedy and the beauty of the main protagonist herself, who walks the destructive path of her own destiny, from a femme fatale with a strong need to destroy the men around her, the woman who manipulates the natural force of female sexuality in order to control the male world and take revenge on it, from a sexually emancipated woman who uses sex to gain power, all the way to a completely different, deeply vulnerable woman or a woman who is simply what she is and defies all specifications. The prologue and the five dance-musical images-acts guide us through Lulu's dramatic inner journey, on which the insatiable search for liberation inevitably leads to her own tragic end. Her life is her funeral.
In the strong interaction of two souls, one that speaks with her body and the other that speaks with his music, to the music composed by Alexander Balanescu, this piece is performed by Andressa Miyazato, the Brazilian dance artist and performer, and the former lead dancer of Staatstheater Darmstadt and Musiktheater Linz, and the violin virtuoso and founder of the world-famous Balanescu Quartet, Alexander Balanescu.' Staša Zurovac
Staša Zurovac is an author, choreographer, director and the former principal dancer of the Ballet Ensemble of the Croatian National Theatre in Zagreb. He graduated from the School of Classical Ballet in Zagreb and continued his education under V. K. Onoschko at Vaganova Academy in St Petersburg and the Ecole Supérieure de Danse de Cannes Rosella Hightower. As a member of the Ballet Ensemble of the Croatian National Theatre in Zagreb, Staša worked with many world-known choreographers (Milko Šparemblek, Martino Müller, Ted Brandsen, Vasco Wellenkamp, Gagik Ismailian, Peter Breuer, Dinko Bogdanić, Patrick Delcroix…) and danced the leading roles in many ballets and dance pieces, including The Nutcracker, The Sleeping Beauty, Coppélia, Miraculous Mandarin, Faust, Triunfo de Aphrodite and Cantata 66. As a dancer he performed in Portugal, Italy, the Netherlands, Germany, France, the United Kingdom, Czech Republic, Hungary, Austria, Slovenia, Macedonia, Turkey, the USA, Brazil and China.
Staša’s work as a choreographer started in 1996. He was a guest dancer and choreographer at the Companhia Portuguesa de Bailado Contemporâneo in Lisbon, and then the Artistic Director of the Ballet of the Croatian National Theatre in Rijeka from 2003 till 2012. Over the last two decades he has created full-evening dance and theatre productions for numerous theatres and companies (the National Opera and Ballet Theatre in Ljubljana - Slovenia, the National Theatre in Belgrade - Serbia, the Croatian National Theatre in Split, the Croatian National Theatre in Rijeka, the Serbian National Theatre in Novi Sad, the Slovenian National Theatre in Maribor, Ulysses Theater, the National Theatre in Bitola - Macedonia, the National Opera and Ballet in Skopje - Macedonia, Introdans Dance Company - the Netherlands), and won a number of prestigious awards, including the annual Vladimir Nazor Award given by the Croatian Ministry of Culture for the highest achievements in various artistic fields.
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Alexander Balanescu is a prolific composer as well as one of the most visionary and exciting violinists of our time. As the leader of Balanescu Quartet, which he established in 1987, he was instrumental in revolutionising the repertoire of a string quartet and bringing it closer to the audience. Throughout his career Balanescu has drawn a lot of inspiration from his collaborations in the world of dance (with Pina Bausch, Meryl Tankard, Jochen Ulrich, Virgilio Sieni), theatre (with Pippo Delbono, Matthew Dunster for the Royal Shakespeare Company, Chiara Guidi for Compagnia Raffaello Sanzio) and film. Balanescu has refused to acknowledge divisions between different musical fields, consequently working with diverse artists such as Michael Nyman, Gavin Bryars, David Byrne, Kraftwerk, Pet Shop Boys, Jack De Johnette, Ornette Coleman, John Surman, Goldfrapp, Depeche Mode, Grace Jones. His first opera, Treibgut/Flotsam, a coproduction between Internationales Donaufest and Theater Ulm, was premiered in July 2016.
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Andressa Miyazato began her career under the direction of Juan José Soares in the Ballet of Sao Jose do Rio Preto, where she worked with choreographers such as Edinaldo Nascimento and Mario Nascimento. From 2001 to 2007 she was a member of the Cisne Negro Dance Company in Sao Paolo, and danced in choreographies by Patrick Delcroix, Itzik Galili, Rui Moreira, Denise Namura and Michael Bugdahn, Dany Bittencourt, Gigi Caciuleanu and Vasco Wellencamp. Since 2007 she has been living in Europe. Miyazato finds inspiration in Kazuo Ohno's tradition of Butoh, in spiritual practices of traditional cultures, and in Pina Bausch`s dance theatre. As a creator, she is primarily concerned with the themes of collective memory, identity, emancipation and empathy. In recent years, she has also devoted herself to academic dance education and research, and is now planning her dissertation at the Anton Bruckner University in Linz. Miyazato believes in the power of dance as a stimulus for social transformation processes.
