NL / EN
Palindrome Images
Playlist
Production
Print Version
Palindrome 27 september to 30 september 2007
In Palindrome the audience follows the dazzling, heroic journey of a fish that at first sight seems unobtrusive: the eel. The life cycle of the eel is shrouded in mystery. How can it be that these small and unsightly creatures hive off across the globe, only to end their journeys of tens of thousands of kilometers in the very place where they were born, the mysterious Sargasso Sea?
The curriculum vitae of the small eel is an important metaphor for an almost indescribable and organic relationship between everything and everybody across the world; invisible, tucked under the surface of the water, but omnipresent.
Our time is an incessant stream of short kicks, fifteen minutes of fame, non-stop shopping, career fairs and a succession of transfer flights. A greater contrast than between this and the life of an eel is hardly imaginable. His long journey and his long wait serve but one purpose: procreation. Therefore, Palindrome is experienced as a modern-day myth that puts our busy lives into perspective. Palindrome meanders and dreams about the big picture.
The performance opened during the Amsterdam Underground Festival, in a bridge cellar below the IJ-river. The audience was literally immersed in a world underneath the real world. The swish of cars and trams crossing a bridge overhead reverberated throughout the room. The group Touki Delphine (Bo Koek, Rik Elstgeest, John van Oostrum) embedded these surrounding noises into the sounds of percussion and slide guitar.
Musically they were complemented by Lei Luo, evoking a tonal world of water symbolism on guzheng (a Chinese sitar). Singing actresses Loes Haverkort and Elsa May Averill roamed the stage like mythological characters. Visually, the audience was carried into a modern-day fairy-tale by onstage draughtsman Yvo Sprey and designer Theun Mosk.
