NEW THEATRE INSTITUTE OF LATVIA

contemporary performing arts in Latvia and abroad

The International Festival of Contemporary Theatre “Homo Novus” will celebrate 25th anniversary this year and starting in March, together with “Hanzas perons”, a new multifunctional venue in Riga, we will co-present a different guest performance on a Sunday each month. The first series will open with a solo performance by renowned Estonian choreographer and director Mart Kangro.

Mart Kangro “Past Perfect”
Sunday 22 March at 14:00 and 20:30
Hanzas perons, Hanzas iela 16a, Riga

Concept and performance: Mart Kangro
Dramaturgy: Mart Kangro, Eero Epner
Technical director: Kalle Tikas
Set, sound and light: Kalle Tikas, Mart Kangro, Anu Vahtra
Space consultant: Anu Vahtra
Technical execution of the performance: Kalle Tikas
Co-production: Kanuti Gildi Saal, Moving in November
Photos:  Alan Proosa
Production management: Kaie Küünal
Duration: 75′
In English

Tickets are on sale at Biļešu paradīze

“As long as I can remember, I have always drank Aperol Spritz during warm nights. Many of the most meaningful conversations or the most memorable encounters with other people in a corner of some park, in some festival centre or at a friend’s place have been accompanied by the orangish mixture of this aperitive, the sparkling wine and fizzy water. How did it start, I cannot remember. Maybe I liked its taste. Maybe there was something in its color – the colorful shimmering was not too obtrusive and vain, but enough kitschy to be cool. The alcohol in it never worked like a hammer, but relaxed the muscles and brought you a heavy undisturbed sleep at night.

But for a long time already, I do not like the taste of Aperol Spritz anymore. It is way too sweet and bland at the same time. Its color has become annoying and the social contacts it helps to create are no longer exclusive, because everybody is drinking it now. The process of mixing it together is tedious and boring, the ingredients and the proportions are never changed, nothing in its preparation is left for the imagination – one and the same mixture repeats itself in my class, unchanged over and over again.

And yet when the moment comes, I ask the barman or a friend to make me an Aperol Spritz and then I sit on some suburban balcony coquetting with a glass of orange liquid in my hand. The evenings are warm and remind me of many other warm nights before. Sometimes it rains. I stir the crystal clear cocktail decorated with a slice of orange and take some sips. Then observing the stripped ice cubes slowly, but irreversibly melt.”
(Mart Kangro)

“PAST PERFECT” is all about remembering and amnesia which always walk hand in hand. What do we decide to remember and what to forget? Are we that what we remember or what we have decided not to? Does historical memory exist? What about the social one? What is it after all that remembers something? What is the story told by this scratch? By this smell? This bomb hole?

Mart Kangro is a freelance performance artist, choreographer and director based in Tallinn. In his work Kangro focuses on the meaningfulness of the human body in theatre as semiotic space-time, and on existential issues of stage situation. His productions have been performed at major festivals across Europe. In recent years, he has directed works in Kanuti Gildi SAAL, NO99 and Von Krahl Theatre in Tallinn and Theatre of Nations in Moscow.

More about  the performing art series “Pārmija” by Hanzas perons here

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