The terrestrial gathering of the mermaids - PURE - MingJou / Frascati Producties
Can mermaids without tails sing? What happens if we forget the colour of coral? Far from home, dreams and fantasies are forged from shards of true stories.
The terrestrial gathering of the mermaids - PURE zooms in on the life experiences of East Asian bodies living in a strange urban ocean. Making use of images, movement and music, MingJou creates an oceanic landscape of love songs, struggles, disorientation and healing rituals. She has invited her friends, performers Yooha, XiaoXiao and Ping-En, to accompany her on this journey; to regain their voices, together.
This work is related to MingJou’s ongoing research into coral and her experiences with scuba diving.
About MingJou
Chen MingJou (陳明柔) was born and brought up in Taiwan. Having obtained a Bachelor’s Degree in Dance from the University of Taipei (2015), she came to the Netherlands to study at SNDO (Academy of Theatre and Dance), graduating in 2023. For the past fifteen years, MingJou has trained in a range of dance styles, developing her own independent practice alongside her studies. She has performed at festivals including ‘Vilnius Performance Biennial’, ‘Tanztage Berlin’, ‘Blossom Art Dance Festival’, ‘Taipei Fringe Festival’ and ‘Busan International Dance Market’.
While still studying at SNDO, she began to observe non-human phenomena and to make use of these in her research into movement as a practice for decentring the spirit. She is also interested in how these phenomena can grant us insights into how we live. She is fascinated by the underwater world and integrates into her practice what she has learned from her physical experiences with scuba diving and her close observations of coral reefs. She looks painstakingly at other worlds before going on to create shared spaces where meetings can take place.
hell: live (in capslock) - Holy Dirt / Frascati Producties
“I believe I am in Hell, therefore I am.”
― Arthur Rimbaud
It’s punishingly pleasant here. Here, the instruments of torture are an attraction. Here, Albert Verlinde is a hero. Here, a three-headed labradoodle stands guard. Here, Lelystad is Vatican City. No one dies here, but that doesn’t make it any less fun. Those who once fell out of Heaven welcome you, and you are greeted by everyone who ever died.
In hell: live (in capslock), Holy Dirt go in search of a place more useful that the earth. In Part 1 of their trilogy: Heaven only knows, they put their faith in Hell.
By means of absurdist images, texts and movements, they plough a furrow through the land of the dead. Is pain a remedy against pointlessness?
About Holy Dirt
Holy Dirt is a performance collective made up of Jan Groenland (Rotterdam, 2000), Bram van der Snel (Lelystad, 1995) and Ies Kaczmarek (Almere, 1999). They all graduated as performers from Toneelacademie Maastricht institute of performative arts in 2023. Their work is an ongoing attempt to bring comfort to the thought that humankind is insignificant and mortal. In a photographic world, they create monumental images and stories with serious humour.
Holy Dirt look for meetings between themes and phenomena that seem to be mutually exclusive. Analogue is technical; tragedy is comical; a photo is movement; illusion is reality. They shape these into a potpourri of differing disciplines such as mime, music, images and language.
Holy Dirt made their debut with Theater aan het Vrijthof in 2021, under their previous name Idolum ; their first production was Unearthly Delights. They exhibited the photo series of the same title in venues including Kunst en expositie café : Café Zondag (Maastricht) and NachtBrötchen Gallery in Roermond.
