Butterfly Effects

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Peripeti: If you ever had the urge to take a walk in the butterfly valley of Inger Christensen, this is your chance. In Wunderland’s performance installation you are examined by death from the butterfly wing, while you listen, smell, feel you way through a maze of curious rooms.

Sometimes a fragile and magical moment is exhibited in the encounter with a foreign body in the darkness, other times you feel the echo of other living beings, which are now gone, but whom everything in the room seems to whisper of. You enter alone, become dressed in a dressing gown and have to leave behind shoes and socks; and as you penetrate the labyrinth, trying to understand its strange logic, you one moment have the sensation of being trespassing who almost violates the maze and its secret denizens, while the next you are the exposed who most follow the trail to the end to escape. Behind the enchantment you sense a looming disaster which is not caused by dark forces, but rather as a reminder that time wears down all things; that you risk yourself in the encounter with others, and that beauty is elusive and ephemeral.

It is a thoroughly thought concept with a clear idea, both in relation to the poetical universe and to the way the participant is placed within the space and in the meeting with the performers. The participant needs to have all senses sharpened to decode and explore the more or less direct invitations from the rooms and the performers. The rooms are so different that you are continuously surprised, and yet together they draw a clear pattern. This is a performance that requires attention, courage, confidence and precision, both from the guests and the performers. It touches the child in oneself that is not naïve, but captivating and deeply disturbing.”

– Thomas Rosendal Nielsen