Dawn

When dawn begins to break, the light after the night starts to grow. The faintest stars gradually fade, leaving only the brightest stars, along with Jupiter and Venus—planets of hope and love—visible for a little while longer.

“Everything will be fine” feels like an impossible promise to uphold today. Not everything might be fine, but things can certainly become different from what they are now. In her 2004 book Hope in the Dark, Rebecca Solnit writes that hope is less of a promise and more of a practice—a collective effort that requires shared time and space to take shape. A labour of care, courage and holding each other in the dark, before it dawns.

DAWN, a new creation by Milla Koistinen and Unusual Symptoms, delves into the potentialities, impossibilities and paradoxes of hope as an ongoing, collective practice. Drawing inspiration from the rituals and physical labour and gestures of maintenance, it explores juxtapositions: hope and grief, joy and rage, passion and fatigue - and asks how these contrasting forces can carry us through hardships, both as individuals and as a community. The practice of hope is nourishing but can also become exhausting. And when a body grows tired, it needs another to lean on, to find rest, and to be carried through. Who and what do we hold onto when dawn doesn't seem to be coming for longer than usual? 

Choreography: Milla Koistinen

With and by: Aaron Samuel Davis / emeka ene, Gabrio Gabrielli, Maria Pasadaki, Nora Ronge, Andor Rusu / Eli Hooker, Waithera Lena Schreyeck, Young-Won Song, Csenger K. Szabó

Internship: Pauline Michel

Sound design: Paul Valikoski

Set and light design: Ladislav Zajac 

Dramaturgy: Marta Keil

Costume: Kristina Jagodić

https://www.theaterbremen.de/de_DE/programm/dawn.1361881

Images ©️ Jörg Landsberg