ALIENATION or the desire for intimacy

A performance project in which three young women explore stories of intimacy. The desire for intimacy, the lack of intimacy, the abuse of intimacy, the misunderstandings of intimacy, the alienation from intimacy.

How can we come closer to others when we don’t let others come close to you?
How to be intimate in a virtual world?
How does your smartphone feel, smell, touch, listen or comfort you?
How is shame touching desire touching intimacy touching your body touching your soul?

During a one-month rehearsal period Benno Voorham created a performance together with Cristina Lilienfeld, Smaranda Găbudeanu and Simona Baciu from Rumania. The working period started with an intensive research period to develop ideas through improvisations and collecting material that would help us on our journey into the depths of our desires, our fears or love towards intimacy. We collected stories from others and sourced into our own stories. The body and its capacity to reveal through movement what we can’t say in words, were our starting points. We used video to support or contradict what the body is telling. Enlarging details; zooming in to reveal what is otherwise hidden to the eyes; zooming out to place the body in a wider context.

The performance that we created is a poetic, visual, moving journey into the underworld of our desires, an intimate travel to what motivates us to be with ourselves or with others.

Can we overcome the alienation that is often experienced between me, myself and you?

Choreographer: Benno Voorham

Performers: Simona Baciu, Cristina Lilienfeld and Smaranda Găbudeanu

Music: Andrei Petrache

Video: Benno Voorham, Răzvan Bumbeș

Light design: Bogdan Gheorghiu

Project coordination & Communication: Monica Bumbeș

Photo credits: Cristina Matei (photos from the performance at MARe, Museum of recent art in Bucharest)

Produced by PETEC in partnership with LAVA-Dansproduktion

Supported by: Administrația Fondului Cultural Național (AFCN) and the Swedish Arts Grants Committee