“AVoid”: Work-in-progress by Marina Cherry

04.04.2024.

A complex tension between internal and external. A voluntary—albeit subconscious—seclusion – work-in-progress by the contortionist Marina Cherry.

Photos: HERE


When: April 12, 7PM

Where: Rīgas cirks (4, Merķeļa street)

Age restrictions: 13+

Duration of the show: 25 min (after the performance there will be a conversation with the artist)


About the work-in-progress show “AVoid”

Created and performed by Marina Cherry with the artistic direction being lead by Brandon Lagaert, AVoid is an interdisciplinary project between acro-dance, contortion, contemporary dance and physical theatre.

The performance creates unexpected connections between structure and chaos, madness and grace, uncertainty and dependence. Through the flux of personal memory and experience comes a natural evolution to withdraw outside of oneself, in order to connect in a public setting the private workings of an individual.

Rendering unexpected connections between structure and chaos, madness and austerity, uncertainty and dependence, AVoid pursues the constructs of our personal realities. One individual. Enigmatic multitudes inside.

Through a use of innovative physicality and characterization, ‘we’ are immersed in an alternate universe; a desultory evolution; confronting ones fantasies, fears, neuroses: a disruption to conventions, vacillating a meta-public setting the private workings of an individual.

This project is born from Marina’s fascination with solitude, contradictions, alienation and the impact of rapidly developing society in the face of digitalisation. The common point being the concept hikikomori – the withdrawal into seclusion, a particular condition in Japanese society where people avoid social contact to an extreme level. Shutting oneself in.

The foreign.
The stranger.
The grotesque unknown.

Hikikomori — “pulling inward, being confined”, also known as severe social withdrawal, is total withdrawal from society and seeking extreme degrees of social isolation and confinement. Hikikomori refers to both the phenomenon in general and the recluses themselves, described as loners or “modern-day hermits”. While the degree of the phenomenon varies on an individual basis, in the most extreme cases, some people remain in isolation for years or even decades.


About the artist Marina Cherry

A contortionist-acro-dancer, educated at ESAC (Brussels 2016-2019) and ENC (Montreal 2014-2016) she is now working on her new solo AVoid, while continuing to tour her other solo Only Bones v.1.6 as well as collaborative projects around Europe, including companies Les Argonauts and Petri Dish and Cirkus Cirkör. Her research-based approach to creation and performing puts her somewhere between dance, contemporary circus and physical theatre; with her body as the tool of manipulation and method for redefining traditional constructs and deconstructing techniques to find her own language.

Marina Cherry has been in Rīgas cirks before: As well in art-residency as performed at Re Riga! circus festival.


Publicitātes foto


Supported within circusnext Platform, co-funded by the European Union.


Your entry and presence on the event premises constitutes your consent to be photographed, filmed, and/or otherwise recorded and to the release, publication, exhibition, or reproduction of any and all recorded media of your appearance.