Hello to emptiness
Performances across India

Hello to Emptiness square © MOUVOIR e.V

In a series of performances across India, choreographer and director Stephanie Thiersch and singer Parvathy Baul, showcase a cross-cultural choreographic concert on rituals of mourning and longing.

HELLO TO EMPTINESS is a performative reflection on social vulnerability and on how we deal with grief. Based on the Greek moiroloi (μοιρολόγια, engl. “speech about fate”), Stephanie Thiersch and eight outstanding dancers and singers develop a poetic space in which ancient laments and traditional rituals are revived and transferred into new contexts. How have climate change, species extinction and ongoing wars shaped our form of lamenting and mourning? How has the pandemic changed the way we look at and think about loss? What value do we, as a community, ascribe to life and what spaces do we create to mourn for this life?

German choreographer and director Stephanie Thiersch meets Parvathy Baul and the Indian Baul tradition for cross-cultural choreographic concert on rituals of mourning and longing: As one of the most versatile and innovative in the field in Europe, the transdisciplinary dance artist and her international company MOUVOIR collaborate with the Goethe-Institut India to create a third version of the choreographic concert HELLO TO EMPTIMESS - The Indian Chapter.

The multi-faceted cast includes, next to Indian singer Parvathy Baul, singer and musician Mariana Sadovska, dancer and countertenor Juan Kruz Diaz de Garaio Esnaola, dancer and countertenor Julien Ferranti, dancer, singer and musician Manon Parent along with Riya Mandal and Joshua Sailo dancers from India. The team sets out in search of the lost knowledge of rituals of longing and mourning. A “choir” comments on the chants and images, connecting darkness with light.

Coming from different cultural realms the outstanding artist personalities on stage combine songs and rites from the Balkans and Europe with the Baul tradition and other Indian song and dance repertoire to create an evening that traces the intimacy and, at the same time, the communal and unifying nature of the laments.

Artists

Parvathy Baul is a practitioner, performer and teacher of the Baul tradition from Bengal, India. She is also an instrumentalist, storyteller and painter. She has performed in over forty countries, including such prestigious concert halls and music festivals as the Noh Theater in Kyoto, the World Music Center in New York City, Melbourne Arts Center and the Festival of World Sacred Music in Fez, Morocco. She has also collaborated with world’s leading theater director Eugenio Barba. She visits several dance, theatre and music institutions across the globe in the capacity of a teacher. The depth of her mesmerising performance is rooted in her deep spiritual practice. It is described by critics as “riveting” and “spellbinding”. Parvathy’s performance work emerges from a long lineage of master Baul singers, dancers, and spiritual teachers. She studied closely with two of the most respected Baul singer-gurus of the previous generation, Sri Sanatan Das Thakur Baul and Sri Shashanko Goshai. She was recognized by her gurus as both a musical and spiritual teacher in the Baul tradition, carrying forward their spiritual legacy.
Joshua is a traveler between worlds and mediums, Joshua transforms his experiences into artistic expressions through dance, music, and visual art. His creative practice involves artistic collaborations across various mediums, exploring themes of identity and power from a queer indigenous lens that places emphasis on the body as a living archive, bringing folk systems to dialogue with contemporaneity through improvisation and composition. He continues to expand his range and versatility as a performer, and has recently appeared in works by Preethi Athreya, Merce Cunningham, Dayita Nereyeth, Surjit Nongmeikapam and Sasha Waltz & Guests amongst others, and is committed to building new arts audiences across India through teaching, podcasting and facilitating artist residencies.
Riya Mandal is a Delhi-based dancer, theatre practitioner, educator, and certified movement therapist. Trained in Kathak and contemporary dance, she has produced and directed numerous ensemble performances showcased across India, with her solo works featured at prestigious dance festivals and residencies in Germany, and South Korea. Riya’s creative practice extends to the intersection of performance and media through experimental filmmaking as a mode of artistic inquiry. Her practice-research investigates the use of movement and drama as methodologies for facilitating community building and fostering social engagement. In 2016, she was honored with the title of Young South Asian Choreographer by the Arts Council of Korea.
Manon Parent is a classically trained violinist, composer, dancer and choreographer. Originally from Paris, she is based in Berlin since 2013. As a multidisciplinary artist, Manon has worked for, and toured internationally with Kareth Schaffer, Roni Katz, Sergiu Matis, Jefta van Dinther and Stephanie Thiersch as well as Margot Dorléans. She was also involved in several productions by Ioannis Mandafounis, among which, she co-authored of Sing the positions and Scarbo. She performed on renowned stages such as ImpulsTanz Festival, Panorama Festival Rio de Janeiro, Centre Pompidou, Tanzhaus Zurich, ADC Geneva, Athens Festival, Sidance Festival Seoul, Julidans Amsterdam, Torino Danzafest, Rohm Theater Kyoto and Theatre de la Ville Paris.
Born in Lviv (Ukraine), Mariana Sadovska has lived in Cologne since 2002. As an artist she has been active throughout Europe and the USA since 1991, including as a composer of dramatic works and songs, with her own concerts as a singer and multi-instrumentalist, with multi-media performances and workshops, and as an actress and musical director of drama projects. She finds essential inspiration in the traditional music of Ukraine and Eastern Europe, which she systematically explores sonically, weaving it into unusual sound pictures in new arrangements and original compositions. In her works, the past becomes contemporary and the regional universal. As an experimental solo performer with voice and harmonium or electronics, she is gladly seen on stages in Switzerland, Italy, Great Britain, Estonia, Poland, Ukraine, Armenia, Afghanistan, Turkey, Israel, Canada, the USA and Germany.
Julien Ferranti was born in Brazil and grew up in Nice, where he started dancing at the Classijazz School, later at the Conservatory. He joined the National Conservatory of Music and Dance in Paris in 2006, where he was trained by Susan Alexander, Peter Goss, Christine Gerard, Florence Vitrac, Cheryl Therrien, and André Lafonta. During his studies he also worked with Yuval Pick, Thomas Lebrun, Emmanuel Gat and Mélanie Lomoff. After graduating in 2011, he joined Philippe Decouflé’s DCA team, with whom he still works today. Since the production of “Bilderschlachten” in 2019 he has been working closely with MOUVOIR/Stephanie Thiersch. Music plays an important role in his career, in most of his productions Julien sings (countertenor) and he also plays the piano. He teaches workshops at the Conservatoire de Paris as part of the project “Tout doit disparaître”. He has lived and worked in Athens since 2019.
Juan Kruz Diaz de Garaio Esnaola was born in Legazpi, Spain and first studied music at the Conservatorio Superior de Música de San Sebastian and early music as a countertenor at the Akademie voor Oude Muziek in Amsterdam. He is interested in exploring the body as an expressive instrument and tool. After working with, among others, DV8 and Lloyd Newson in London, he has a long and successful collaboration with Sasha Waltz. He regularly gives workshops and master classes worldwide.
Dr. Upali Chattopadhyay is a well-known composer, singer, educator and a musicologist based in Kolkata.

Under the tutelage of Dr. Chattopadhyay, a choir from Kolkata including Mishti Dutta, ⁠Papiya Bagchi. ⁠Ishita Ganguly, ⁠Madhumita Sen, ⁠Tutun Dasgupta, ⁠Papiya Bagchi, ⁠Ishita Ganguly, Madhumita Sen and ⁠Tutun Dasgupta will perform on stage with the ensemble.