MERRY.GO.ROUND

2017 | 50min | Black Box | Medium-Large space

Astronomy for poets and lovers

Merry.go.round is the latest and final piece in Maria Nilsson Waller’s triptych based on unclaimed territories. The piece looks beyond our world into the great vast blackness of the cosmos in order to examine our most human of concerns: the search for true love and what it is we call home.

In a work reminiscent of Chagall, Satie, Dali and Kubrick we meet five characters inside what seems to be a world stuck in post-romantic stress disorder. Time, Anticipation and Transformation are key ingredients when the clockwork of paths and journeys are set in motion – it is a search for true love in the light of the big western romantic myths, cinematic and otherworldly, yet strangely familiar. While the work contains an obvious reference to the movements of celestial bodies, our understanding of the universe, gravity and even time itself, the main concern is questions of a more humane character: What happens when you join another person’s orbit? How can you stay together when your paths are splitting apart? How many times do you have to pass each other before you connect or reconnect?

With a touch of cinematic sci-fi, Merry.Go.Round features an eclectic soundtrack including Swedish rebel jazz band Je Suis!, NASA recordings of the solar system and iconic opera classics. Performed within a structure of scored improvisation the piece is never the same twice.

Choreography: Maria Nilsson Waller

Sound design: Maria Nilsson Waller

Visual design: Maria Nilsson Waller

Light design: Stephen Dodd

Cast: Elin Hedin, David Nondorf, Marcia Liu, Justine Cooper, Mikel Aristegui

Marketing Manager: Noelia Ruiz

Supported by: Irish Arts Council, Dublin City Ccouncil, Konstnärsnämnden, Region Jämtland Härjerdalen, Estrad Norr, Dance Ireland, Jämtlands Kulturkompani.