After a successful sophomore edition in which electronic music and interdisciplinary art came together, ADE and International Theatre Amsterdam present the return of Arts & Culture with ATMEN, a theater production of Nicole Beutler Projects. The art installation and performance piece by Nicole Beutler is the second part of the trilogy RITUALS OF TRANSFORMATION, and invites you to step into an undiscovered piece of the future in 2200 where theatre ITA is overgrown by nature. Search for a new balance between humans, earth, animals, and technology during this immersive visual performance premiering on ADE Wednesday and Thursday, and get a glimpse of what ADE Arts & Culture has in store this year.
ATMEN (evolution is silently unfolding)
In ATMEN, Nicole Beutler welcomes you to an undiscovered piece of the future; it is 2200. A pulsating, vibrating and breathing paradise in which nature has reclaimed its place. The red plush in the theatre is now part of a living ecosystem. The ruin is overgrown with bacteria, flora, fauna and shiny fungi. Along with hybrid creatures, the audience becomes part of this ecosystem, in which the four singers of the award-winning dance opera 8: METAMORPHOSIS sing romantic songs of nature.
Run time 90 minutes
Genre dance
Language various languages
Under the moonlight, a wolf howls and two dancers meet. Together with the living space, they move to music of lost radio waves, rustling leaves and electronic music compositions by our in-house composer Gary Shepherd. These compositions are inspired by remnants of Schubert songs.
Visual artist Heleen Blanken uses three-dimensional video images to make the theatre overrun with resilient nature. Deep in these damp, vibrating, cavernous depths, at the bottom of a post-apocalyptic reality, the wild promise of an unimaginable future gradually takes shape.
The second part of the trilogy: RITUALS OF TRANSFORMATION (towards a new humanity) is an immersive theatrical experience. We travel through an experiment, a speculative fiction where we contemplate constant collective transformation in an overgrown ruin.
In the first part of the trilogy: GINKGO or: 56 million years ago there were palm trees on the North Pole, we watched the end of the man-made world, like a film without a happy ending. In ATMEN, Beutler and her team let the audience catch their breath again with a space full of life, potential and change. In the final part of the trilogy, a new balance will be found.
This trilogy creates a space where the performers and the audience reflect together on what it is to be human in this world. Theatre offers an opportunity to think critically about the future of humanity on the planet. Beutler aims to touch the audience by offering new perspectives, by breaking open existing concepts in search of new, unexpected connections, generating potential for a hopeful vision of the future.
This performance is presented as part of a collaboration between Internationaal Theater Amsterdam (ITA) and Amsterdam Dance Event (ADE).
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