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
You are invited to witness a dancer meander, swirl and wobble through a never-ending flow of representations, to be lead on a meditative ride where images emerge, fuse and disappear relentlessly. As an audience member you are also invited to experience your own experience as spectator.
Lola Maury, who I collaborated with since 2005, asked me to take part in a very special experiment: one performer and a limited audience wearing earplugs to maximize the internal sounds and isolate them from the rest. I was asked to guide the audience towards themselves, as well as towards the work, creating a soundscape that would be filtered through the earplugs. Indeed, a very special work.
‘Trapped underwater in a thunderstorm. Heavyheaded. 4 am Sunday morning. Hypnotic’. Audience reaction
Choreography: Lola Maury
Dancer: Laureline Richard
Sound: Alberto Ruiz Soler
Lighting: Alberto Ruiz Soler and Lola Maury
Costume: Clare McGarrigle
Advisor in Dervish dance Practice: Jorge Crecis
Producer: Helen Goodman