Canopy Shyness

(numbers, numbers, numbers)

Dubravko Mihanović Šimičić – text
Michaela Müller – live animation
Zrinka Šimičić Mihanović – dance
Filip Šovagović – voice and music

The space between, /no one’s and everyone’s. / From mangroves of Costa Rica / to camphor trees of Malaysia, / from Australian eucalyptus trees / to North American pine trees: / trees let / other trees grow, / without fear, / in order to survive.

 “Canopy shyness” gathers four artists from diverse, yet close areas of activity, with a desire to meet in “no one’s and everyone’s space in between”, inscribing in it motifs like the fear of the other, the need to protect (ourselves) and inability of doing that, roots and wandering, empathy and acceptance… The poetic monologue written for this occasion by Dubravko Mihanović Šimičić is fragile in its narrative and kaleidoscopic in pictures which appear and disappear, melting in the flow of dreams; they are carried by the voice of Filip Šovagović, accompanied by the touches of his authored music, performed on acoustic guitar, offering the dancer Zrinka Šimičić Mihanović a rhythmic structure interwoven with silences; however, her dance is a response, and an incentive, to / for text, music and picture, which she supports or resists, occasionally only associatively connected to their motifs; while Michaela Müller’s animation, created live during the performance and viewed projected on the wall, creates wondrous, dream-like scenes in constant movement and contact with other segments of the show, by using simple objects such as a rope, cloth or a jar…

The project has been realized as a co-production of Multimedia Hut and Play / Pause – Paint Film, Müller, in collaboration with the Novi Zagreb Culture Center.

The project has been supported by: Ministry of Culture and Media of the Republic of Croatia, City of Zagreb, and Kulturförderung Kanton St. Gallen.

Photographer: Jasenko Rasol, Dražen Šokčević