Johhan Rosenberg / Von Krahl Theater (Estonia)
POST-SUMMER CHOIR
Post-Summer Choir is a choir performance in public space with songs about time, the body and the hot summer. The choir seeks hope, a way to enter a more ecstatic, interfused connection with the world. To receive daily reminders of how we are all connected and always in motion. To free our minds from death, sex, tired rituals and heteronormativity. To start dancing with other species. Our cells are made of love that does not operate on a dominant, invasive or gendered basis. The production is based on Aino Kallas’ The White Ship (1913), as translated into the context of contemporary bodies and geopolitical mythology. The choreography structure observes social order.
The performance attempts to decode how our actions leave traces on the land and on each other's bodies, and how collective emotions affect our language, physicality, and movement. The production peels back the layers of colonization individually and collectively, across generations and in specific locations in urban space. Looking back through centuries at the patterns of violence and oppression and the transformation of language, the cast from 31st Class of the EAMT School of Performing Arts along with Johhan Rosenberg orchestrate an extremely industrious and prolific choir. The choir embodies the intermingling of cultures, the craving for a fresh sense of purpose and a protest movement.
Those gray and black human figures stood there on the open beach from morning to night, and in their tanned faces their longing eyes were always drawn towards the sea. They are called the Post-Summer Choir, and they were waiting for a ship. The white ship. The ship that would come to save them was supposed to be white, bright white, as white as God’s sun in the sky… Everyone’s faith and hope had finally united on this ship. The vessel that would take everyone back to their roots. This ship was created from religious poetic foam, but over time it acquired a slightly more real shape on the seashore of Tallinn. The ancestors traveled in a white ship, returning at the end of summer to be reborn. The Post-Summer Choir has rusted skin and on their heads pigtails made of worn reefs that melt under the sun. The village says that they have consumed too much seawater while waiting for the ship and see illusions and visions. They sing and cheer openly and sell skulls to ancestors. So they have decided to come to share and celebrate loss, heat, happiness and failure, shaking the flesh from their bones and the voices from their heads. Their white ship revolution is irresistible. They remember how the world worked before them.
Wed 3.06 kl 17 Rakvere Market (outside, near Laada 39)
FOR FREE
Duration: 90 min
Language no problem
Author and choreographer Johhan Rosenberg; Vocal arrangement Anne Türnpu; Designer Pire Sova; Make-up Pire Sova, Iris Lillemägi; Performers Markus Andreas Auling, Lauren Grinberg, Karl Birnbaum, Hanna Jaanovits, Jette-Loona Hermanis, Richard Ester, Hele Palumaa, Laurits Muru, Kristina Preimann, Herman Pihlak, Juhan Soon, Emili Rohumaa, Edgar Vunš, Astra Irene Susi; Technical assistance Linda Mai Kari, Rainer Põldeots; Produced by EMTA Lavakunstikool (EAMT School of Performing Arts), Johhan Rosenberg.
Special thanks to Tallinna Linnavalitsus (Tallinn Municipality), Angela Mooste, Jaak Prints, Erki Naumanis, Ekke Hekles, Johanna Ulfsak, Kodulinna Maja, Maike Lond.
Previous showings 6. and 13.05 2024 at Balti jaam tunnel.
