Deus ex Machina

Premiere: October  28, 2010 - Nederlands Dance Teather 2.  Lucent Dance theater, The Hague, The Netherlands. 

CHOREOGRAPHY and SET DESIGN:  Fernando Hernando Magadan

DANCERS: Bryan Arias, Marco Blazquez, Or Kahlon, Marne van Opstal,Spenser Theberge, Astrid Boons, Aram Hasler, Chiaki Horita, Myrthe van Opstal.

MUSIC: Stars of the Lid: Hiberner Toujours.

Vivaldi "La fida Ninfa": Sinfonia, RV725-Allegro. "Giustino": Vedro' Con Mio Diletto (Anastasio). "Ottone in Villa": Frema Pur, Si Lagni Roma (Ottone). Cecilia Bartoli/Nicolas Porpona (composer): Orchestra: Il Giardino Armonico & Giovanni Antonini, Come Nave in mEzzo all'onde (Siface).

Handel Serse: Aria 'Ombra Mai Fu' (act 1, scene 1).

VIDEO: Harmen Straatman, Tupac Martir, Fernando Hernando Magadan.

LIGHT DESIGN: Tom Visser.

COSTUMES: Fernando Hernando Magadan, Joke Visser.

Duration: 23 min 

Dancers are quite familiar with the association between transformation and Art. With the idea of the natural physical body being something to manipulate and transform. It is something they start doing, from a very young age, since the moment they step in a dance studio. Departing from this I started to look back in history.

Soon I realized that the supreme example of this physical transformation in the name of Art is the art of the Castrati. The Castrati were the singing superstars of the 18th Century. But once they were also boys who were making a major physical sacrifice for their singing careers. I believe there are echoes in modern culture of this link between changing physical form and sacrifice as part of performance; dance could be one of them. For this new work, this parallelism between those two worlds has been constant source of inspiration.