ELLARD/LECH ^(SWE) Late Night: Funeral 20-21 February 2020

Programme

Funeral is based on the rites of loss.

What they mean, what they do to us and their place in a de-ritualised and dying civilisation.

What is lost without these rituals? With death as a constant, how do the emotions and expressions of grief exist and change?

The work explores the grieving body, the music of death and the collective practice of dying.

LECTURE WITH Barbara Raes

The ELLARD / LECH : FUNERAL will be preceded by a lecture by Barbara Raes (BE), a funeral director specialising in alternative loss rituals.

Date: 4 Feb at 19.00 in Dansklotet, Wallingatan 19.
Free admission

Barbara Raes was previously active as artistic director at BUDA and Vooruit Arts Centre until she decided to go in a new direction in 2014. She trained as a funeral officiant and in 2016 founded Beyond The Spoken, a forum for unrecognised loss. In Beyond The Spoken, she and other artists create new goodbye rituals and help people take time to process transitional moments in their lives. However, her old love for art is never far away and it has also found a place in her practice.

Our society has been de-ritualised in recent decades. This is evident in cases of loss, grief and death. Some would say that we are not allowed time to grieve and that we lack the tools to contextualise grief. Could it be that many people crash precisely because of unprocessed, unrecognised "little burials" in life?

In this lecture, Barbara Raes tells us about a great personal moment, and how this became the impetus for developing a new space between art, care and rituals.

Co-organised by Ellard/Lech and Dansens Hus, with support from Konstnärsnämnden.

About the choreographer

Lisen Ellard & Mattias Lech

Mattias Lech and Lisen Ellard work together on performing arts and death. In their work, they have visited crematoriums, morgues and funerals, written farewell letters, meditated on death and undergone fake funerals in South Korea. In 2017, their performance "DÖDEN" premiered at Ung Scen Norr. The performance is still touring in Sweden and internationally and is part of DANSISTAN's programme.

With backgrounds in dance, theatre and radio, they vary mediums and forms of expression, exploring different ways to collaborate and coexist as a duo and with other artists. In their works, they often work with different forms of audience interaction. Something they have also investigated in works with other choreographers and artists such as Lundahl/Seitl (SE) Sidney Leoni (FR/BE), Marina Abramovic (SRB) and Lea Martini (DE). Ellard has previously premiered her group piece If ever in range at Dansens Hus and Lech has created several works with the Norwegian artist Ivar F Aam and as part of the trio GomesLechQuigley.