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
Something between a prehistoric opera and an eerie ballet, Empire of a Faun Imaginary addresses feelings of meaninglessness and futility, the inadequate devices we have to navigate them, and the fantasies this generates. Yearning for transformation and new futures, Empire of a Faun Imaginary is a melancholic world in search of the miraculous, that asks: How can we go on, and how can we dream again? The piece combines vocal work, visual art, and bodies in movement to explore our tussle with a contradictory, messy, and uncertain world, where horror and beauty carry on a strange dialogue.
Artistic director: Simone Mousset
Performers: Tasha Hess-Neustadt, Lewys Holt, Eevi Kinnunen, Hannah Parsons, with Jorge Motel / Carine Baccega / Louis Chevalier
Dramaturg: Lou Cope
Artistic companion: Neil Callaghan
Cultural theory consultant: Macon Holt
Sound: Alberto Ruiz Soler
Voice work and vocal composition: Jamie McCarthy
Lighting: Seth Rook Williams
Stage and Costumes: Lydia Sonderegger
Stage and costumes collaboration: Ariane Koziolek, Anne-Sophie Raemy, Leonie Wienandts
Puppet creation: Sophie Ruth Donaldson, Emilie Mathieu
Wigmaker (tights): Birte Meier
Tailoring: Cony Jegerlehner
Producer: Vasanthi Argouin
Production and stage manager: Bryony Byrne
Stage manager: Alberto Ruiz Soler
Assistant stage manager: Jorge Motel
Company management: Cathy Modert
Development in France: Les Indépendances
Attachée de presse (France): Murielle Richard
Production: Simone Mousset Projects
Coproduction: Escher Theater (LU) ; Esch 2022 Capitale européenne de la Culture (LU) ; POLE-SUD, Centre de Développement Chorégraphique National, Strasbourg (FR) ; Centre Chorégraphique National de Nantes (FR) ; KLAP Maison pour la danse (FR) ; Les Hivernales – CDCN d’Avignon (FR) ; Atelier de Paris / CDCN (FR) ; Centre Chorégraphique National de Rillieux-la-Pape, direction Yuval PICK (FR)