LILI UM: A LONG SONG (2024)
Lili um is a long song of veiling and unveiling at a site of auto-ethnographic archaeology.
Inspired by Cassie Thorton’s “The Hologram”, Veronika Šleivytė photography and personal biographical stories, this piece is thinking in triangular ways about trust, wishes and time; compliance, collaboration and resistance; health, wellness, and sickness. Searching for intimacy and care and ways forward in hopeless conditions. Leaning on the theoretical work of Ursula K. Le Guin, the work excitedly abandons the singular hero and instead manifests as a temporary artificial garden, vining and shimmering among the concrete walls of a former church.
Lili um is an ode to a multitude of underground spaces where care takes place.
Lili um is also a collection of love letters to queer ancestry, to bodies living with sickness and all the ghosts and spirits that keep me dancing.
ASPEENA: DREBULĖS DAINOS (2023)
Aspeena (or Drebulė in Lithuanian) is the name of a daughter who is blamed for betraying her mother's secret in a well known Lithuanian folk tale "Eglė Žalčių Karalienė" ("Eglė, the Queen of The Serpants") She is a half human and half grass snake, often portrayed as a shy and helpless girl, but what does she have to say if given the voice to finally speak her truth? The work looks at folkloric images through the lense of queer imagination and manifests as a choreographic collage of vocal work, somatic practice, shared and private dances, video, strings and lace.
This work was made in the frame of a collaborative project between SNDO and ECD (Expanded Contemporary Dance) departments at the Amsterdam Academy of Theater and Dance.
AFTERHOURS (2022)
Drawing inspiration from movement practices of Butoh and body weather, 90s rrriot girl punk rock, Beckett plays and ancient greek mythology, an eclectic landscape emerges exploring the themes of waiting and aftermath. At the end of a rock concert by the moss punks, Oizys and Momus, the guardians of depression and mockery, sit around in a plastic floating garden. Waiting for the flood. Talking about god. Until memories start leaking. Drones are flying overhead. It is always dead silent in the eye of the storm. Door opens. Ghosts enter. Walls start to shift. Are we still here? How many times will we die over? How long is the after after after?
MORĖ (2021)
Morė is a common character found across eastern Europe. In Lithuania, it is an effigy burnt during the carnival at the end of winter, a version of Mardi Gras of sorts. It is often portrayed as a highly feminine figure, who's ashes will fertilise the fields for the coming season, a ritualistic sacrifice.
This solo work grapples with the themes of grief, remembrance, (be)longing, folklore, death, and rebirth, by trembling through the image of a burning (femme) body, melting the uncanny dreams and divinations read in the ashes.
Moss punks Helene Ridderberg, Ursula Marcussen, Ascan Delarber Oizys & Momus La Uyi Ihasee, Ciro Monoarfa Goudsmit Chicken spirit Yujing Liu, Thalia Livingstone Time travelers Paca faraus, Matthieu La Brossard, Sasu Korom, Rafael Reinata Ferreira, Reyer van Barneveld, Anllel Tanus, Rosa van den Idsert Music Liberty Snake (Ascan Delarber) Artistic Advising Katerina Bakatsaki Mentor Joy Mariama Smith Light & Sound Roan Lo-a-Njoe, Geert Oddens Photography Nellie de Boer Choreography & video Agnė Auželytė
Thanks to Tom O'Doherty for musical inspirations and Maryam Babur for a heartfelt dedication to the metaphysics
Presented at Danstheater, Amsterdam Academy of Theater and Dance
PARADISE | SNDO 2022
Choreography Agnė Auželytė Performance May van Leeuwen, Bo Nijssen, Josselin Prat Music Ascan Delarber, VROUW! Make up Matthieu La-Brossard Artistic Advising Carly Rose Bedford Research support IPOP (In Pursuit of Otherwise Possibilities) Amsterdam, Austėja Baltrušaitytė Mentor Joy Mariama Smith Production manager Lisa de Kwant Light designer Katinka Marac Sound Dymf Mussig SNDO production Chantal Mooij PR coordinator Keerthi Basavarajaiah Graphic design Ion Kazantzidis ECD coordinator Gideon Poirier ECD assistant Roos Oudt SNDO artistic director Bojana Mladenović ECD artistic director Bojana Bauer Photography Nellie de Boer Videography Gergely Ofner
Presented at VEEM House for Performance, Amsterdam
SNDO | PARADISE SPRING COLLECTION 2023
Research, installation & performance Agnė Auželytė Sound Agnė Auželytė in collaboration with Soft Noise Collective & Liberty Snake Collaborators and hologram holders Ascan Delarber, Yadin Bernaue, Alla Kravchenko Set design consultant Ksenia Oganesyan | cure.tain Artistic advice Carly Rose Bedford Costume Lettau Art Fashion Mentor Ana Vujanovic Photography Ursula Marcussen Photography (documentation) Nellie de Boer, Gergely Ofner Video excerpt used from "Hold Your Horses" (2022) edited by Teaque Owen, footage from fake company archive Video documentation & trailer Gergely Ofner Video documentation Saskia Habermann
Special thanks to Cassie Thornton for publicly inviting the stealing of your work and imagining antidotes for more caring futures and Ula Liagaitė for bringing this methodology to my attention
Lilan Patri for ongoing inspirations on how to get on, sharing precious time and stories and allowing me to work in your garden
Shelley Etkin for blessing my life with your embodied knowledges on plants, compost and witchcraft
Photography historian, critic and curator Agnė Narušytė for bringing Vėra's photography and life story into the public attention
To Lithuanian Queer Archive for doing the beautiful and necessary work resisting historical erasure
Iconic dance artist Kathleen Hermesdorf (1967-2020), your legacy lives on
Production manager Charlot van der Meer Light and Sound Martin Kaffarnik & Rik van der Veen SNDO production Chantal Mooij PR coordinators Evelien van de Sanden and Antonella Fittipaldi Social media coordinator Karina Villafan Festival graphic design Ion Kazantzidis, Tom O’Doherty
premiere at Tempel Amsterdam March 2024 SNDO | PARADISE 2024
"...over and over and over, we die in paradise, and from our ashes gardens grow, we bloom forever in the ruins, the wasted lands, the songs of dinosaurs, the breaks of the heart , the shifting worlds--- as bloody rivers, as innocents stardust."
UNDONE: A BREATH SCORE (2019)
A sequel work exploring the cross overs between sound and movement created in collaboration between dance artist Agnė Auželytė and drummer Stephen Doyle. This piece is an improvisation score for two bodies and 15 electric keyboards, exploring slowness, repetition and contemplative states. Performers practise different breathwork techniques to tune to one another, the sound and the space as a build up of sustained drones washes over the room.
REVIEW (TANZSCHREIBER.DE)
UNDONE: A HEART SCORE (2019)
“UNDONE” is an improvised duo performance exploring various cardio states. Following a simple score, two bodies run for one hour with no audience present. Entering at the peak, the piece emerges from the unraveling of the post-collapse state. It is a dialogue between movement and sound, which cross into one another, blurring the lines between disciplines. Percussive structures crumble. Bodies enter into a meditative trance, pushing their pulses to the limit, allowing an abstract sonic and visual poem to occur where the intelligence of the heart is employed in search for ones intuition.
Concept & Performance: Agnė Auželytė & Stephen Doyle Light: Aurora Rodriguez Costumes: Lisa Simpson (Agente Costura)
Created and presented in the frame of Double Bill Residency 2019 at Lake Studios Berlin with the support of the Berlin Senat for Culture and Europe.
Concept & performance: Agnė Auželytė & Stephen Doyle Costumes: Lisa Simpson (Agente Costura) NAH DRAN hyper-extended: Force Fields curated by Lee Méir ada Studio management & organization: Gabi Beier Technical management: Ansgar Tappert Video documentation & trailer: Walter Bickmann
Funded by the Berlin Senate Department for Culture and Europe. Thanks to the Inter-University Centre for Dance Berlin and the Uferstudios-Team.
Concept & Performance: Agnė Auželytė Camera assistance: Billy Morgan Ghost & Guest performer: YuJing Liu Photography: Donata Kukytė, Nellie de Boer SNDO, 2021
