Production Details / Press Releases
Pastoral poetry from Greek and Roman antiquity is at the base of Sergiu Matis’s performance “Hopeless.” In an unceasingly warming world, what is left of the idyllic, cultivated nature described in the poems of Theocritus and Virgil? Are the poets perhaps themselves responsible for setting it on fire with their trivial erotic turbulence, and their politicising of landscape? In “Hopeless.”, we forge our own pastoral settings out of shreds, fragments and remains, like data from a library of sounds of extinct animals, or old and new translations of the Idylls. A desperate act of putting back together, or franticly trying to conserve what’s left, all the while mourning the losses yet to come. A general sensation of powerlessness transforms us into spectators at a festival of catastrophes and ruination.
The performers in “Hopeless.” are technologically enhanced mermaids, nymphs and shepherds that desperately compete to see who can make the audience cry the loudest. The ecology between poetic language and choreography enables words to collide woefully with flesh, and vocal cords to give the tone to motion so that we can shout out loudly, and exorcise all possible dystopian scenarios. Hopelessness is not a state of a paralysis, but a powerful force that moves us to act.
[Source: play bill]
TFB Nr. 1287
Cast & Credits
Concept, choreography: Sergiu Matis
Performance: Martin Hansen, Sergiu Matis, Manon Parent
Text: Sergiu Matis, Mila Pavicevic, based on translations of Theocritus and Virgil
Sound design: AGF aka Antye Greie
Dramaturgy: Mila Pavicevic
Set design: Dan Lancea
Costume: Philip Ingman
Light design: Sandra Blatterer
Choreographic assistance: Orlando Rodriguez
Production management: Dag Lohde
Translations of Theocritus and Virgil from: Hine, Daryl (trans.), 1982, Theocritus: Idylls and Epigrams, New York: Atheneum; and Holzberg, Niklas (ed. and trans.), 2016, ‘Bucolica / Hirtengedichte’ in Bucolica, Georgica / Hirtengedichte, Landwirtschaft, Berlin, Boston: De Gruyter, pp. 42–50.
Animal sounds courtesy of the Macaulay Library at the Cornell Lab of Ornithology and the Xeno-canto Foundation, and the following recordists: Patrik Åberg, Arthur A. Allen, Desmond Allen, Nick Athanas, Ian Atkinson, Mark Barsamian, Hanom Bashari, Arnoud van den Berg, Caio Brito, Warren Brockelman, Rhys Buckingham, Timothy Burr, Stijn Cooleman, Ronald Crombie, John Dennis, George Drewry, William Duellman, Amy Dunham, Stephen Edwards, Victor Emanuel, Johannes Fischer, John Fitzpatrick, J. Richard Gauthey, William Gunn, Pieter de Groot Boersma, Kim Howell, Panchapakesan Jeganathan, Gareth K., G. Stuart Keith, Peter Paul Kellogg, Ben King, Jon King, Daniel Lane, Linda Macaulay, Yann Muzika, Markus Nolf, John O’Neill, Michael Ord, Theodore Parker III, Erik Patel, Eduardo Patrial, H. Douglas Pratt, Thane Pratt, A. Stanley Rand, Ronald Sauey, Robert Shallenberger, Roney Souza, Robert Stein, Charles Sutherland, Philippe Verbelen, Jean Ward, William Ward, Bret Whitney, Lucienne Wilmé, and C. Fred Zeillemaker.
A Sergiu Matis production.
Funded by the Capital Cultural Fund, the Senate Department for Culture and Europe, coproduced by Tanzfabrik Berlin in the frame of Open Spaces! in cooperation with Radialsystem.
With the kind support of Sasha Waltz & Guests.
Tanzfabrik Berlin / Wedding
Uferstr. 23
13357 Berlin
Video Documentation
The video documentation is produced on behalf of the Senate Department for Culture and Social Cohesion. The purpose of this contract is to document productions in the field of contemporary dance in Berlin. The master recordings are archived by the University Library of the Berlin University of Arts. Copies of the recordings on DVD are available for viewing exclusively in the reference collections of the following archives (at media desks in these institutions):
University Library of the Berlin University of Arts
Mediathek für Tanz und Theater des Internationalen Theaterinstituts / Mime Centrum Berlin
Inter-University Centre for Dance Berlin (HZT)
Sergiu Matis / Trailers and Video Documentations
- Sergiu Matis: Interview / Portrait Sergiu Matis (2019)
- Sergiu Matis: Warp Renderings (2024)
- Sergiu Matis: Blazing Worlds (2023)
- Sergiu Matis: DRANG (2022)
- Instant Feedback / Sergiu Matis: Hopeless (2019)
- Sergiu Matis: NEVERENDINGS – Season 2: Daydreams for a Better World (2017)
- Sergiu Matis: NEVERENDINGS – Season 1: 100 Years Revolution (2017)
- Sergiu Matis: Deleted Scenes (2016)
- Sergiu Matis: Explicit Content (2015)
- Sergiu Matis: Duet (2012)
- Sergiu Matis: all of a sudden (Ausschnitt) (2011)
- Sergiu Matis: Doom Room (2010)