A music and dance exploration of the barry and mystical landscapes of the desert

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“I went to the desert last night.
And I ate it all.

I ate all this vast, silent, beautiful, wild desert.
I was eating for hours.
But in the end,
I ate it all.

I ate all its huge, grainy, sensual rocks
humming to me with ancient libido.
I couldn’t resist.
I ate them all.

And all these myriads of granules of sand
that sing in the evenings
accompanying the wind.
I opened humbly my mouth
and let them come in.
All these granules of sand
were entering my mouth for hours.
And I allowed them all to come in.
I ate them all.

And all this thick and loud silence
that was spreading around me,
till where my eyes could not even imagine there was still World.
The loudest silence I had ever heard!
I opened all my ears
and my inner ears
and my ear labyrinths.
As widely as I could.

And the loud silence entered
and poured slowly
deep down into my heart.
Slowly, slowly,
it started pouring,
dripping drop by drop,
deep down to my heart.
And there,
when it reached my heart,
it started slowly licking it
And embracing it.
The deep loud desert silence
embraced fully my heart
and soothed it.

And I.
I stayed like this.
With my mouth and ears open.
And my heart silently embraced.
For hours.
Until all the sand was entered.
And all the silence was poured.
And all the rocks were ingested.

Until all the desert was completely empty.

Until I had eaten it all.

Thus,
I ate all the desert last night.

And now it lives all inside my belly.

It lives in me,
breathes in me,
oozes in me,
sings in me.

And Me,
I am here.

With this desert living inside my belly.

Looking at you
looking at me.

And I know that you know.

That I will never be the same again.”

Arvind Ganga and Electra Kouloumpi have created a music and dance performance inspired by the intense and unforgettable encounters they both had with the desert.
The two artists, who had collaborated before in the past, coincidentally travelled both to different deserts during 2016. Arvind experienced the salty desert of Chile, while Electra visited the far west desert landscapes of California.
Coming back to Europe and meeting at the studio, they both realized that they were altered.
Arvind had fallen in love with this massive alive beauty, full of things happening that you cannot see, but you can feel, while Electra was mesmerized by this loud silence that sounded like the most enthralling music.
They started moving and making sounds to recreate the landscapes, to fill the studio with sand, with rocks, with wind, with silence, with things that cannot be seen but can be felt…

Arvind and Electra work with principles of improvisation and instant composition in movement and sound to create real-time performances full of imaginary, textural and adventurous landscapes.

ARTISTS BIOGRAPHIES–
Arvind Ganga is a guitar player from Den Haag, the Netherlands. He takes a physical approach to guitar playing, employing objects and extended techniques to explore new sonic possibilities. His music draws from influences as diverse as noise and drones, North Indian ragas, experimental rock, and everyday sounds. With free improvisation he brings these together into an intense, loosely structured, chaotic mesh that is bathing in the rays of a deep red sun. Ethereal noise with a punk-improv attitude. Arvind plays solo, improvises with like-minded musicians, and is active in music/dance improvisation. His music took him to play squats, galleries, clubs and festivals from Poland to Portugal, Turkey, Chile and Perú.
https://www.arvindganga.net/

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Electra Kouloumpi is a Greek dance artist, currently based in Amsterdam, engaged in making work that explores the relationship of the moving body and the space. Bringing elements both from her dancing and engineering/architectural backgrounds, Electra creates site-specific performances that explore the way we perceive space through the body and through sound. Playing in the intersections of improvisation, dance, live art, and vocal/sound explorations her work aims to unveil the abundant poetry hidden in everyday scenes, everyday feelings, everyday buildings and everyday bodies. Her performances have been shown amongst others in festivals and art events in the Netherlands, Germany, Uk, Greece, USA and she has recently been the recipient of a scholarship for the interdisciplinary collaborative EMERGE artistic residency in the USA.
http://www.electrakikk.com/

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