On Earth I’m Done - Part 1: Mountains Part 2: Islands

Some dance pieces have such an impact that they bring about a collective ecstasy in the audience. The Swedish-Dutch Jefta van Dinther does this with his work like no other. The 'darling of the European dance podiums' allows light, space, sound and the dancers' bodies to flow together into what one reviewer once famously called 'a composition of experiential structures.' Van Dinther's choreographies are ultra-physical, beautifully portrayed, and downright overwhelming.

For the Swedish dance company Cullberg, the choreographer created the 'archaic-futuristic' diptych On Earth I'm Done, with the solo Mountains as the first part. The second part, Islands, is a group piece for thirteen dancers.

In Mountains, we witness the birth of a new world. Surrounded by magical lighting, the dancer relates to tens of meters of fabric which are folded, which is folded and deformed into an ever-changing mountain landscape. ‘Ruthless in its form,’ Svenska Dagbladet wrote. ‘The work listens to the urges, desires, fears and suspicions that vibrate beneath the surface of homo sapiens – our fragile relationship with a world that constantly threatens to slip out of our hands.’

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In On Earth I’m Done: Islands, the audience is transported to a place torn out of the conventional space-time continuum. Orbiting the conflicts of beauty and danger, existence must be rebuilt from scratch and living learnt anew. Elementary logics and irregular intelligences are being reborn; life passes between mineral, vegetal, animal, human and machinic forms. Islands is a performance which imagines an alternate order of organization, a state of exception, quarantined from the natural world. Here, replication becomes a mode of survival and dancing a weapon.

“With Islands we are heading into a place where humanity can no longer be taken for granted. The life existing here thinks and acts and speaks through the vector of human emotion, but their feelings are synthetic. Their social interaction is hacked, their sexual reproduction is an interface, the care for their planet is automated,“ says Jefta van Dinther.

Together, the two parts of On Earth I'm Done are a penetrating wake-up call. Why are we destroying our home planet to maintain a culture that has less and less to do with our essential humanity?

On Earth I’m Done:
Part 1: Mountains

Choreography Jefta van Dinther
Performed by Marco da Silva Ferreira
Created with Suelem de Oliveira da Silva
Sound design David Kiers
Set design Numen/For Use
Lighting design b
Produced by Cullberg
Co-produced by PACT Zollverein Essen, Freiburg Theater and Vitlycke – Centre for Performing Arts
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On Earth I’m Done
Part 2: Islands

Choreography Jefta van Dinther
Performed by Adam Schütt, Agnieszka Sjökvist Dlugoszewska, Anand Bolder, Anna Fitoussi, Camille Prieux, Cecilia Wretemark-Hauck, Dan Johansson, Eliott Marmouset, Heather Birley, Johanna Tengan, Louise Dahl, Víctor Pérez Armero, Vincent Van der Plas
Sound design David Kiers
Costume/set design Cristina Nyffeler
Lighting design Jonatan Winbo