Language of the birds

In 1987, the last song of the now-extinct Moho bird was recorded: a call to a mate who would never answer again. A song projected into the void. For creator Reza Mirabi, that sound evoked a memory of a text he had learnt as a child – Mantiq ut-Tayr, or The Conference of the Birds, a twelfth-century Sufi poem. In it, birds from all over the world gather around a single question: How do we respond to a world that seems to be falling apart?

A question that has lost none of its urgency.

Mirabi translates this centuries-old allegory into the present day in Language of the Birds. It interweaves choreography for two dancers Gustavo Ciríaco and Mathilde Bassetti, live music by Saba Alizadeh on the kamancheh (a Persian stringed instrument) blend with electronic and noise elements, music by singer songwriter Astønne, with Percussionist Khaled Abdou, and live storytelling by Sher Doruff.
-|-
The birds’ search for a leader is interwoven with real-life stories: two sisters in Gaza counting the remaining birds, vets in Delhi rescuing thousands of birds of prey, a tsunami survivor on the Nicobar Islands who was warned by birds, a pigeon speaking from the rooftops of Tehran.

The performance does not seek definitive answers nor pass judgement. It creates space for attention, for listening, for the questions we rarely ask aloud. How can we continue to interact with each other in this day and age, across distance, differences and disruption? These voices together – human and animal, old and new, near and far – form the true language of the performance.

This project would not have been possible without the generous support of the AFK, Frascati Theater, and Julidans Festival.

During Julidans, you can experience multiple performances in a single day. Enjoy an abundance of dance and make your festival visit truly complete. The more performances you book, the greater the benefit. Receive 10% off when booking 2 different performances, and 20% off when booking 3 or more different performances.

In addition to Language of the birds on 11 July, you can also see on the same day:

• Lisa Vereertbrugghen - Again Forever
  17:00h, Brakke Grond
• Jefta van Dinther - Mercury Rising
  21:00h, Frascati
• Zora Snake - Combat des lianes
  21:00h, Theater Bellevue

-|-In addition to Language of the birds on 12 July, you can also see on the same day:

• Jefta van Dinther - Mercury Rising
  21:00h, Frascati

"This piece has been in the dreaming for more than three years.
And now we arrive here together, with soft hearts and trembling fingers.

It began with a poem by the 12th-century Sufi mystic Attar of Nishapur, written in what is now Iran: منطق الطیر, Mantiq ut-Tayr (The Conference of the Birds). Nearly 900 years ago, Attar took the phrase منطق الطیر (language of the Birds) from the Qur’an and began his poem from a world coming apart at the seems.

A world where all the birds respond by coming together to ask: what do we do now?

I have known this poem since childhood, when my parents told it to me and I had a picture book version at home. Three years ago, I encountered it again in a quite weird way, and it landed in me completely differently. It has not left me ever since. It became an important companion on my journey through these last few very intense years.

I realised that its questions, written in the 12th century, are absolutely the questions of our time. Yet it approaches them through poetry and spiritual perspective, (rather than through political language, activism, or critical theory,) so often underestimated paradigms.

In the poem, the birds realise that they need to go on a journey together that leads them to sense that what they are seeking is actually already within them, in their togetherness and collective form. A shift of perspective. A certain receptivity to other worlds that has been lost with time.

Across times and cosmologies, the language of the birds has stirred the imagination as a hidden script, a secret carried in sound, a code of relation between the seen and unseen.

This project follows its historic traces, not to decode it, but to listen for what it might open in us now.

-|-

With people I love deeply, we came to feel Attar’s poem as a call to gather inside the fractures of the present and to reimagine it as a myth for our time. Together with Saba Alizadeh, Astrønne, Sher Doruff, Gustavo Ciríaco, Matilde Bassetti, Khaled Abdou, Lauriane Daphne Carl, Jethro Cooke, ro.heinrich and Siavash Naghshbandi, we enter an impossible attempt to sense what the language of the birds might stir in us in a time marked by insurmountable violence, grief, dislocation, and loss.

It feels deeply urgent today, when so many solutions are framed through force, aggression, war, enemies, or the promise of a future technology. Modes of finding solutions that live, as in Bayo Akomolafe’s words, in the same logic as the problem itself.

Through choreography, live music, bilingual storytelling, animation, film, and poetics, the work brings ancient cosmologies into relation with contemporary stories from Gaza, New Delhi, Tehran, Amsterdam, and the Nicobar Islands.

At its heart lies a question: how do we respond as the world we know breaks apart?

Birds, the keepers of the sky, become our guides into invisible worlds. We listen to their flight, murmuration, migration, and vulnerability. We feel their delight in flight, and yet also their trauma, their resistance, and their despair.

As our worlds are collapsing in front of our eyes, how can we still move toward shared acts of world-making?

A humble attempt to move within another paradigm: love as an impossible practice, collaboration instead of competition, and a deep listening to what is already here but to which we do not seem to be perceptive.

Overcoming fear.

Being here.

In total despair, we meet."

Concept, text & direction Reza Mirabi
Co‑creation, sound composition & performance Saba Alizadeh
Sound composition & performance Astrønne, Khaled Abdou
Choreography & performance Gustavo Ciríaco, Matilde Bassetti
Text & performance Sher Doruff

-|-Creative sound & light design Jethro Cooke
Installation Lauriane Daphne Carl
Video ro.heinrich, Siavash Naghshbandi
Made possible by AFK, Frascati Theater, Julidans