Water Will (in Melody)

Water Will (in Melody) was created during Ligia Lewis’ time as a Factory Artist and forms part of her trilogy BLUE, RED, WHITE, together with Sorrow Swag and minor matter. This delicately spun choreography for three dancers takes melodrama as its starting point. Wrestling with the language and the concept of “will”, this dystopian fantasy creates a space in which desire, imagination, and the feeling of a nearing end are negotiated. Here unfolds a wet and porous landscape with playful ingenuity: It becomes the site for a fictitious story marked by instability, new creation, and catastrophe.

Ligia Lewis opens a world in which voices and gestures, touch and movement flow like waves – tender and turbulent at the same time. Using mimetic techniques, the dancers deal with the permeability of theatre: They create a materiality that appears fantastic, freed from all weight of metaphor or symbolism. Succumbing to the haptic possibilities, meaning dissolves, only to return to form again. Through processes of alienation, of externalisation and realisation, this melodrama probes for the boundaries of its own condition. So, it revives both the emotional constitution of its protagonists as well as that of theatre itself.

Ligia Lewis, alongside Claire Cunningham and Choy Ka Fai, was part of the second Factory Artist generation at tanzhaus nrw from 2017 until 2019. She has won numerous prizes; receiving the renowned Bessie Award for minor matters, the Prix Jardin d’Europe  for Sorrow Swag, and, most recently, the Tabori Award. Summer 2021 saw the collaboration between Ligia Lewis and tanzhaus nrw for the VOLUME UP Festival for unheard stories and disregarded knowledge.

Duration: 90 min.
Attention: loud music

You will receive a 50% discount on the normal price of admission if visiting multiple Factory Finale events.