LILITH
I AM A MOMENT and so many others
By and with: Julie-Anne Stanzak, Scott Jennings, Pawel Malicki, Ophelia Young und Nathalie Larquet
LILITH
In the setup of Requiem for a Forest
by Nathalie Larquet
A poetic and unsettling meditation on environmental loss, memory, and transformation.
For two years, choreographer and filmmaker Nathalie Larquet documented a forest near Wuppertal—first as a place of striking natural beauty, then as a landscape of devastation. What was once a sanctuary of stillness, alive with wind, trees, and birdsong, turned into a field of ruins.
The forest is gone.
In response, Larquet created this multi-screen video installation featuring four dancers from her timefellows collective, filmed during the forest’s final seasons. Their movements are elegies—gestures of remembrance and mourning. Through stripped-down choreography and delicate rituals, the performers carry the forest’s presence in their bodies. Branches become limbs. Felled trees, altars.
This is not a documentary.
It is a requiem.
With: Julie Anne Stanzak, Ophelia Young, Scott Jennings, Pawel Malicki
Voice and text: Ophelia Young
Huluppu – The tree of Life
Sumerian Mythology
This forty-minute digital performance opens a space for a danced monologue—flesh and presence—drawn from the ancient Sumerian myth of Lilith.
It tells the legend of Huluppu, the Tree of Life, which once connected the earth, the underworld, and the sky in one sacred continuum.
It tells of Lilith, who dwelled within it—until the tree was felled by Gilgamesh, so that, it is said, a radiant throne and a sacred bed could be fashioned for the goddess Inanna.
The symbol of life thus becomes a symbol of power and domination.*
Confronted with this act of violence, Lilith flees into the desert.
(* Other interpretations read the myth as the end of chaos and the birth of an ordered world.)
This is not merely a dance of mourning, performed in turn by protagonists crossing from the digital into the tangible present.
It is also a dance of devastation, of revolt, of resistance.
In Sumerian mythology, stories are told and retold, each time from a new perspective—
and there is every reason to believe that Lilith and Inanna may be one and the same figure in this tale.
Total duration of the performance 70 minutes
Sponsors & Supporters
The Basis – A TINY CUT IN A VELVET DRESS I and II were supported by the NATIONAL PERFORMANCE NETWORK – STEPPING OUT, funded by the Federal Government Commissioner for Culture and the Media as part of the NEUSTART KULTUR. Hilfsprogramm Tanz, the Kulturbüro Wuppertal and with the kind support of Christian Baierl – Renaissance Immobilien AG
