SHEELA is an adaptation of a piece that was created in 2021 for Opéra de Lyon ballet company. Choreographer Fabrice Mazliah creates a piece with six female performers that focusses entirely on their voices, their joint presence and the potential community that they unleash. Inspired by historical working practices in which physical labour was accompanied by singing, SHEELA expands on an improvisation exercise in which the dancers become aware of their sheer presence. They reveal themselves to and learn from each other by sharing their voices and their songs, their individual movements and heritages within the group.

SHEELA enables an echo of these traces of movement to be heard and asks: Who or what is shown to the audience in an interflowing corpus that is read as female, in which individuals come together in a greater whole and return the gaze that is focussed on their bodies?

Premiere: 7 / 8 / 9 November 2024, Frankfurt LAB, Frankfurt

Credits:
Concept, stage, costume: Fabrice Mazliah
Choreography: Fabrice Mazliah in collaboration with the dancers
Dance and singing: Marie Albert, Katja Cheraneva, Viktorija Ilioska, Aoife McAtamney, Patscharaborn Distakul, Ophelia Young
Voice coach and outside eye: Dalila Khatir
Dramaturgical accompaniment: Anne Kersting
Composition and sound effects: Johannes Helberger
Lighting design and technical direction: Matthias Rieker
Production: Johanna Milz

A co-production of Künstler*innenhaus Mousonturm funded as part of the Alliance of International Production Houses by the Federal Government Commissioner for Culture and the Media. Work of Act is supported by Kulturamt Frankfurt am Main.