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
What if disappointment was something humans were aiming for?
BAL: Pride and Disappointment, shown as work-in-progress in June 2021, is somewhere between an ice-dancing routine and a weird dream, filled with flying cows, awe-inspiring horses, inter-dimensional pop stars, and two people trying to do something great.
Disappointed with their human existence, Lewys Holt and Simone Mousset embark on a series of efforts towards a sense of something that once was, but is no more. In the midst of folkloric imagery, they are dealing with each other’s positions and propositions, as they pursue a desire to transcend their human form through dance, imagination, and a new myth, designed specifically for the occasion.
Concept and performance: Lewys Holt, Simone Mousset
Sound: Lewys Holt, Alberto Ruiz Soler
Costume and stage: Lewys Holt, Simone Mousset, Melanie Planchard
Text: Lewys Holt, Simone Mousset
Artistic support: Inari Hulkkonen, Eleanor Sikorski
Initial research companion: Anne-Mareike Hess
Voice-over: Anne Klein
Lighting design: César Santos, Nicolas Tremblay
Production manager: Nicolas Tremblay
Producer: Vasanthi Argouin
Production: Simone Mousset Projects
Co-production: Escher Theater, Luxembourg
Logistical support: Abbaye de Neumünster