CRUEL, CRUEL NATURE

Concept, choreography and performance: Zrinka Šimičić Mihanović
Choreography and performance: Lana Hosni
Video and light: Martina Mezak
Music: Adam Semijalac

“Innocent and benign”, as Thoreau wrote, nature “is compassionate to our species”. While the wind in P.J. Harvey’s song whispers, “cruel nature has won again…” the nature of man and the nature to man is compassionate and cruel, it destroys (itself, too) and recreates again. It swells and dries out, it silences and attires, it emerges and disappears. It wins. It is neither good nor bad; neither happy nor unhappy; neither merciful nor cruel; it has no beginning or the end. Only its movement is constant, a change. Restoration, in everything, all the time. Movement is that which resists and says that death leads into life. If nature is the winner and we make part of the nature in our pulsation, we are also winners. A child is sleeping, it is breathing, and its nostrils are widening: in that movement there is the joy of the moment. Frailty. Fear. Gentleness. Strength. Cruel, cruel nature.

This show by the Multimedia Hut was created as a reaction of the authors, gathered by the invitation of the dance artist Zrinka Šimičić Mihanović on the topic of resilience and restoration that we find in every breath, every movement, in ourselves and around us. The topic emerged from the concept author’s long-lasting engagement in movement through the somatic approach. The gathering of the team of associates was preceded by the examination of movement through somatic perspective and the theme of restoration emerged as the key topic for its understanding. The work was created in collaboration with the festival Perforations 2018.

Co-production: Zrinka Šimičić Mihanović, Multimedia Hut, Domino

Supported by: Ministry of Culture of the Republic of Croatia, City of Zagreb, Perforations festival

In terms of providing the rehearsal space, the project was supported by Ekscena and Zagreb Open University, Tala Dance Center and the Student Center of the University of Zagreb – the Cultures of Change.

First performance: June 29, 2018 at 9.00 pm / Teatar &TD / Perforations festival

Photography: Jasenko Rasol