A Theatrical, Musical, Choreographic Tribute to Sri Aurobindo
Streaming Live from the Sri Aurobindo Auditorium in Auroville on Saturday September 25th
The artists’ bodies are pushed to their limits by this question: “Is this the end?”. They express the physical urgency of a new breath, of a new link to oneself and to the other. The artist’s body becomes the very place of the performance.
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Saturday September 25th
9pm India
5:30pm Central Europe
4:30pm London
11:30am New York
8:30am Los Angeles
This event will be a preview and a look behind the curtain as Surya Performance Lab develops their next major project, inspired by Sri Aurobindo’s poem Is This The End? They will invite us into their process and explain how they’ve drawn this poetry into their bodies and found means of expression that captivate the audience and transform the dancers themselves.
The work will explore the bodily dimension of sound and the sonic dimension of the body. It seeks to bring out a body that is not confined by the body of the dancer or defined by the skin, but a larger body in connection with Vastness and Nature. The viewer will be immersed in a multi-sensory environment, fusing binaural beats, natural sounds, and electronic music to create an intimate, organic experience. And the soundscape includes the mantric poetry of Sri Aurobindo in English and old Tamil.
Story
Two young people, a man and a woman in love, face a world in crisis and in deep transition. They carry on their shoulders and in their bodies, the memory of a world which seems to be extinct and especially the memory of a suffering Nature.
In this stifling, dying world, where everything seems small, cramped, confined, they are, like the planet, in the urgency of a new deep breath.
“Is this the end of all that they did or dreamed?” Is this the end or a new beginning?
Will they finally find their right places in Nature, as a part of it?
Will they hear their inner call for change?
Beyond any restriction, will they finally find their rightful place within Nature whose call they feel?
Finally free, vast and loving?
Tribute to Sri Aurobindo
This show is inspired by a poem written by Sri Aurobindo. This evokes one of the essential truth of Sri Aurobindo’s philosophy: The human being is a being of transition.
The crisis that our characters face is the opportunity for a profound transformation of their material being. Sri Aurobindo offers the keys for this transformation which today takes on a particular meaning.
The asphyxiation and all the limitations, restrictions imposed by the news of a world in crisis, provoke in the bodies, the urgency of a new breath, of a vastness, of a freedom, of a thirst for ‘To be.’
Apart from the performance, we will share our experiences immersing in Sri Aurobindo’s poetry and how we have derived inspiration from his work.
Is this the end?
Is this the end of all that we have been,
And all we did or dreamed,–
A name unremembered and a form undone,–
Is this the end?
A body rotting under a slab of stone
Or turned to ash in fire,
A mind dissolved, lost its forgotten thoughts,–
Is this the end?
Our little hours that were and are no more,
Our passions once so high
Being mocked by the still earth and calm sunshine,–
Is this the end?
Our yearnings for the human Godward climb
Passing to other hearts
Deceived, while smiles towards death and hell the world,
– Is this the end?
Fallen is the harp; shattered it lies and mute;
Is the unseen player dead?
Because the tree is felled where the bird sang,
Must the song too hush?
One in the mind who planned and willed and thought,
Worked to reshape earth’s fate,
One in the heart who loved and yearned and hoped,
Does he too end?
The Immortal in the mortal is his Name;
An artist Godhead here
Ever remoulds himself in diviner shapes,
Unwilling to cease
Till all is done for which the stars were made,
Till the heart discovers God
And the soul knows itself. And even then
There is no end.
-Sri Aurobindo
