Community performance „and then there was us“
“and then there was us” is a walking performance on Vooremägi (Uniküla, Tartumaa). The procession features horse carriages, live musicians and local stories turned into poems, songs, and dances.
Story
For more than a year the creative team of INITIUM foundation has been visiting Kastre parish libraries, youth centers, schools, forests, meadows and swamps, the homes and saunas of locals, listening to what these people want to share about themselves and how they feel about being together. Maybe even more specifically – they have been discovering together with the locals if there is such a thing as “togetherness” and if there is, where can it be found? These answers felt like different streams and paths to take, each of them leading to an opposite destination. The performance might be seen as a series of eruptions of those answers, feelings, and thoughts. The audience is invited to catch them, swim through them, or just go with the flow, even if it runs underground.
Etenduse pilet koos ala pääsmega
Täispilet 25 €
Õpilane, tudeng, pensionär 20 €
Lastele vanuses kuni 6a (k.a) tasuta
Mis ajal etendused toimuvad?
- R, 31.05 kell 18
- R, 31.05 kell 20
- P, 2.06 kell 13
- P, 2.06 kell 15
Please leave at least 15 minutes to get from the parking lot to the starting point of the performance.
Latecomers are not allowed to the trail.
With mobility issues please contact for assistance: liina.jogar@gmail.com, +372 5365 2155
The project is part of the European Capital of Culture Tartu 2024 main program.
The show will be held, performed, and delivered by the best people (and horses) from Kastre
Haaslava Male Choir (conductor Kalev Lindal), dance group Krüsanteem (leader Made-Heljo Ruul), village band HääMiil, musicians Ain Anijärv and Osvald Pähno.
Actors: Merle Päll, Ivar Dubolazov, Ene Runtel, Sandra and Gregor Kroon, Marta Pärn, Liise Rebeka Käärik, Daren-Marcus Teder, Teresa Lepikov, Raivo Aasna and others.
Horses by Võnnu Mahetalu
Production manager: Liina Jõgar (EST)
Production: INITIUM and Kastre municipality
Lavastust produtseerib loomekompanii INITIUM
The Riga-based production company INITIUM Foundation (Ieva Niedre) has diverse experience in carrying out art projects in rural communities. These projects have resulted in site-specific cultural events such as theatre, dance, concerts, exhibitions and installations in Latvia, the Baltic States and Europe. They lead the work of the Baltic Applied Theater School together with Baltic partners and are engaged in neighborhood development through culture and community movement. INITIUM works with communities to create innovative theater productions that reflect the unique stories, perspectives and experiences of local people, an endeavor that seeks to spark social change and inspire a more inclusive and vibrant society. With their performance “Malleus Maleficarum. New contract” they won the 2023 Latvian theatre awards in the categories of performance of the year and best video artist.
Barbara Lehtna
Barbara is an Estonian director, to whom all art revolves around finding different ways of being together. Barbara’s works include theatre, dance and other forms of expression and quite often she works with or around communities. She graduated from the Netherlands University of the Arts with a master’s degree in performing arts and was selected as one of the artists of the European Network of BePart (Art Beyond Participation). She has worked with artists such as Doris Uhlich, Julian Hetzel, Chris Kondek and believes that art must be intimate and always political.
Jānis Balodis
Jānis is one of the most interesting playwrights of the new generation in Latvia. He is working at the Dirty Deal theatre, collaborating with major theaters in Latvia and Lithuania. Together with his comrade-in-arms Valters Sīlis, he has been considered the revivalist of the political theater genre in Latvia. He has written for the stage about the crisis in Ukraine, climate change, and the Soviet era, but always from a personal point of view, making the most of the possibilities of documentary theater and connecting with it various techniques of immersion and humor.
Līva Blūma
Līva is a musician, singer and composer who divides her life between Latvia and the US. As a creator, she is often inspired by everyday life. She creates music for human voices, instruments, and electronics, and her work has been performed in Latvia, England, Austria, Germany and the USA.
Helena Krinal
Helena is a freelance dance artist born and raised in Tartu and residing in Palestine, whose creative work focuses on improvisation and communication between bodies. Since 2014, she has been creating socially critical productions under the team krinal | mansour, mainly in Palestine, and mainly outside art circles and theatres. Her latest performances are slow evolving meditative, seemingly random encounters of bodies, such as “Noise” (2019) and “Shame” (2021), staged for Zuga company.
Kristians Aglonietis
Kristians is a Latvian multimedia artist. He works mainly as a costume designer and make-up artist for theater performances and films, and also created the costumes for the INITIUM production “Malleus Maleficarum. New Deal”.
Ilga Vālodze Ābele
Ilga is a Latvian folklorist working with life stories in the light of historical events, and with collective memory and heritage studies. Since 2019, Ilga has used her academic training – biographical and contextual studies, life-story interviews, etc. – in background research for applied theater performances as part of the INITIUM artistic team, working with different communities across Latvia and currently with the Latvian community in Australia.