Plum wine, highway, lemon

PLUMWINE, HIGHWAY, LEMON is a celebration of MYSTERY. Of legends, myths and ghost stories that have us shudder and listen like our ancestors did around the campfire. Mysteries that blow our minds and make the hair on our arms stand on end; the way they do when you suddenly realize a truth, when you make love, when you fear for your life – or when you take that last breath.

Death and what lies beyond is one of life’s greatest mysteries. This is our way to approach this mystery that breathes behind things, lurking in the water, in the darkness between the trees, in a room behind something behind something. Open the box – let’s see what’s inside!With a curious devil-may-care attitude we have turned to religious imagery, ancient death rituals, detailed accounts of near-death experiences, shamanistic rites or modern science recent discovery of the Higgs Particle. From here we have collected an intricate web of images, analogies and ideas that somehow resonate within ourselves, and let them unfoldin movement, sound and images of our own.

We have embarked on this journey – not in search of evidence, conclusions, or some solace of salvation – but for something much less definite; feelings, questions and puzzling images, that may stimulate a deeper contemplation on life, death, existence and spirituality.

PLUM WINE, HIGHWAY, LEMON mixes hardcore physicality with magic realism, live music, poetic imagery and a refreshingly dark humour. It has been created in the characteristic movement language of Kasper Ravnhøj/Mute comp. Physical Theatre; a kinetic unfurling on the edge of the physically [im]possible, that has led critics to label this instantly recognizable movement-style as crash dance.

The live music is created in a unique collaboration between Korean composer WON IL and Faroese composer/singer Anna Katrin Egilstrøð, marking an unprecedented meeting between Nordic melancholia and Asian minimalism that brings folk tales, myths and traditional roots into a contemporary sound.

Throughout 2013, ’14 and ’15, Kasper Ravnhøj is producing three performances that each focus on life, death, spirituality and religious feeling.

THE CONSPIRACY OF SPRING 2013 is the first performance in this series and examines what it means to be alive, to test life’s limits and to explore feelings of immortality, in particular from the perspective of youth.

With PLUM WINE, HIGHWAY, LEMON in 2014, Mute Comp. Physical Theatre engages with the ineffable question What happens after we die? and interprets those myriad descriptions of the afterlife which can be found in religions, myths and stories of near-death experiences.

The journey through the themes of existence, the soul, spirituality and religious expression concludes with MOST TRUTHS ARE SO NAKED in 2015, which focuses on cults, sects and the consequences that arise when people find themselves in these manifestations of religious community.