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Lonely Species

Bodine Sutorius & Nikki Ong
Thu 21 Nov ’24 and Fri 22 Nov ’24
A perfomance about a woman venturing into the wild.
Thu 21 Nov ’24
and
Fri 22 Nov ’24

A detached human stumbles upon the earth. She ignores, dominates, controls. She sows, reaps, mows. She digs, searches and descends. Deep in the ground she finds something she lost a long time ago.

"Species loneliness is the gnawing fear that we are alone in the universe, with a desperate hunger forconnection with other life. It is a new form of collective anxiety: we are disabled creatures dislocated ina wounded landscape.” Michael V. McGinnis

Lonely Species is a mime-performance about alienation from nature and loneliness in a time of extinction. Bodine Sutorius and Nikki Ong explore new ways of coexisting with the land from which they were once born. They attempt to capture the complicated relationship between human and landscape in a physical and musical language. 

As research for this performance, Bodine and Nikki walked the Kungsleden trail in Swedish Lapland.

They hiked 440 kilometers through dense forests and past snow-capped mountain peaks, separate from each other. For twenty-four days they exchanged their urban existence for the rugged landscape, trying to find answers to the questions underlying this performance. Can modern humans still be wild? How do you connect with non-human life, when the world you live in is so human? Can we still feel part of an ecosystem?

Aftertalk 21st of November 

After the performance on Thursday, Dramaturg Judith Wendel will moderate an aftertalk. She will talk with creators Nikki Ong, Bodine Sutorius and Thomas van den Berg about their research in Lapland and the creative process in which they got to know each other anew through movement, text and music. 

  • Duration: 60 min. 
  • Aftertalk 21st of November.

Credits

concept, performance Bodine Sutorius, Nikki Ong text Nikki Ong music, technique Thomas van den Berg final direction Moniek Merkx scenography Marieke Horst light design Gé Wegman costume design Kyra Vivian Wessel video design Vito Boox, Anne Fé de Boer artistic advisor Thomas van den Berg production Bodine Sutorius, Nikki Ong co-production Boris Mulder PR-photos Melissa Schriek scene photos Henrik Hellström trailer Jonatan Gyllenör special thanks to Inkonst, Jakop Ahlbom Company, Studio FCP, CLOUD Dance Lab, Petra Huisman, Amanda Davies, Arnold Put, Sanne Danz, Art Srisayam, Fonds Podiumkunsten, Amarte Fonds, AFK, Janivo Stichting, Simon & Theresia Cultuurfonds.

About the makers

Bodine Sutorius (1998) is a performer and theater maker. She graduated from the Mime School at the Academie voor Theater en Dans in 2020. Bodine has performed with various theater companies such as Jakop Ahlbom Company, NITE and Maas theater en dans. For her graduation she created the solo performance Becoming, which won her the André Veltkamp scholarship. 

Nikki Ong (1998) is a writer and theater maker. She graduated from Writing For Performance at HKU in 2023. She has worked as a playwright for JTSZO, translator for NITE and as a dramaturg with De Pierewaaiers. She also writes poetry and makes music. With her graduation work, Waterwezen: een poging om geen mens te zijn, she won the Pluijm research prize.