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EITULOVNI

 dance, live music, poetry and visual art

in a forest lake  

Floating poetry

Eitulovni is a location performance in and around a forest lake, created especially for the first edition of the Into The Great Wide Open Festival on Vlieland (2009), a small island in the north of Holland.

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A wooden forest cabin covered in the poetry of Dutch writer Slauerhoff (himself born and raised on the island), and words gently floating on the water, spreading images about a time when words did not even exist yet. Old words slowly emerging from the bottom of the lake. The sisters just go, without hesitation, without withdrawal symptoms, without culture shock. Without feeling homesick. Just because they have to.

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During a partly sung and swam duet on the border of land and water, the two sisters (Aafke and Hanneke de Jong are in fact also sisters in real life) accept the water as their only escape. The islands in the north of Holland - a protected area known as the ‘Waddeneilanden’- slowly but surely are being claimed back by the rising water. Their only chance to survive is to surrender.

A vague memory, evoked by the call of the siren, seduces the sisters to go into the water, to once and for all return to where they came from a long, long time ago. The process of inversion has begun. The involution (hence the inverted title that comes from the Dutch word involutie) of mankind on earth. From bipod to amphibian and from amphibian to fish. Or perhaps even further back. Until a line of division is no longer visible between land and water and between themselves and the world. When normally it is not good to look back for too long, for the sisters this seems the only chance for having a future.

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Eitulovni is a performance in reverse. It is about the fear for the future of our natural environment. Will we be able to give nature back what it deserves?

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Team Eitulovni - Into The Great Wilde Open Festival

Concept Aafke de Jong / Hanneke de Jong

Choreography/dancing/swimming Aafke de Jong

Music/singing Hanneke de Jong

Poetry J.J. Slauerhoff

Stage setting advice Jonas de Witte

Sound engineering Rinus Aarts

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