With motherhood as a point of departure, Aftermath explores the sense that ‘something is over’ and questions what comes next.
During the making of the show, Recacha carried out an outreach programme for mothers and their small children, immersing herself again in that period of early childcare and its impact on the mother’s sense of identity and agency.
Inspired by Recacha’s own experience of motherhood and the social isolation that can accompany it, Aftermath questions what it means to live in a ‘post-everything’ world – post- feminist, post-truth and now post-time. The show imagines a world where the characters are dead, where change is no longer an option and no future awaits. Is motivation possible in such a world?
The audience is seated within the performers’ arena. They are part of the dancers’ journey and yet they are not directly involved. Aftermath comments on our reluctance to act in the face of certain situations, and on the normality of this passivity.
“giddy, ridiculous and amusing two-hander”
“Eleanor Sikorski and Charlotte Maclean weave patterns of wit and absurdity in Eva Recacha’s quietly radical show”
“The pair heat up to a giddy, edge-of-madness energy reminiscent of early French and Saunders.” – The Guardian
“It’s perfect casting with Sikorski as the acerbic, calculating wit and Mclean as the mercurial creative force; their two trajectories start on a fragile thread and fuse together to the point of familiarity and mutual admiration.”
“With its cross between The Private Life Of and Monty Python, Aftermath is as much an exploration of ennui as a picture of the divergent elements of artistic endeavour.” –
Writing About Dance
Coreography: Eva Recacha in collaboration with Charlotte Mclean and Eleanor Sikorski.
Sound design: Alberto Ruiz Soler
Lighting Design: Jackie Shemesh
Set and Costume design: KASPERSHOPHIE
Performance: Charlotte Mclean and Eleanor Sikorski
Co-writers: Charlotte Mclean, Eleanor Sikorski, Eva Recacha
Dramaturg: Simon Ellis
Production Manager: Emma Wenlock-Bolt
Producer: Johnny O’Reilly
Sound artist and composer
The French mystic and philosopher Simone Weil wrote that “attention is the rarest and purest form of generosity”. Andante is an invitation to pause, to connect with your senses, to be in a room with others and not have to say or even see anything. It is conceived as a generous and patient walk into a cloud of attention and time.
The word andante refers to a type of musical movement that is moderately slow or distinct. It originates from the Italian word andare which means “to go”.
‘The show is a meditation on time and attention; on observation and obscured perception. The overwhelming sense is that something is being communicated to you so fundamentally obvious and profound that it is almost impossible to comprehend what it is until and unless you just allow your consciousness to absorb it. […] Who knows how it may evolve, but it already feels like a significant piece of genre-shifting new dance.’ ✭✭✭✭½ PETER JACOBS, REVIEWS HUB
‘For a work of such silence, absence and stillness, Andante remains deeply full throughout.’ PAUL HUGHES, EXEUNT MAGAZINE
Directed by: Igor Urzelai and Moreno Solinas
Devised and Performed by: Eleanor Sikorski, Giorgia Nardin, Igor Urzelai and Moreno Solinas
Dramaturge: Simon Ellis
Sound Composition: Alberto Ruiz Soler
Set and Costume Design: Kasper Hansen
Costume Supervisor: Sophie Bellin Hansen
Lighting Design: Seth Rook Williams
Nose: Alessandro Gualtieri
Voice Coach: Melanie Pappenheim
Producer: Sarah Maguire
Production Manager: Hannah Blamire