Sun & Sea, the opera-performance that stunned audiences at the 2019 Venice Biennale, returns to its native Lithuania on 12–15 December, and will be held in Lithuanian with a possibility to follow the libretto in English.
Created by the three Lithuanian artists Rugilė Barzdžiukaitė, Vaiva Grainytė, and Lina Lapelytė, the work was awarded the Golden Lion for the Best National Pavilion at the 58th International Art Exhibition of La Biennale di Venezia. Since then, the piece has toured in 28 countries and 36 cities around the world – from Taipei to Sydney.
The opera-performance is staged on an artificial beach which will pop up in the former Vilnius taxi park. The exclusive venue with an 8-storey spiral ramp driveway will let the audience move along and observe the view from a solar perspective above the stage in different scales – like zooming in or out.
The setting – a crowded summertime beach, created by the director Rugilė Barzdžiukaitė – conveys an image of laziness and lightness. Holidaymakers dressed in brightly coloured bathing suits lie under the artificial sun, building sand castles, reading books, playing games, having snacks, and singing their stories subtly written by the librettist Vaiva Grainytė. As these multiply, everyday micro-events slowly give rise to broader, more distributed anxieties related to the planetary anthropogenic climate change.
Themes of corporeality and universal fatigue of the human and the planet unfold in the work in a captivating and mildly ironic way, intensified by an unsettling soundtrack by the composer Lina Lapelytė. In this context, the message follows suit: contemporary crises unfold easily, softly – like a pop song on the very last day on Earth.
Curated by Lucia Pietroiusti, founder of General Ecology at Serpentine, Sun & Sea has been presented in such festivals and institutions as Brooklyn Academy of Music (New York), the Hammer Museum, MOCA, and CAP UCLA (Los Angeles), Teatro Argentina (Rome), E-Werk (Luckenwalde), LIFT, Serpentine and We Are Lewisham (London), Helsinki Festival (Helsinki), Sydney Festival, Santiago a Mil International Festival (Santiago de Chile), Teatro Colón (Buenos Aires), Taipei Arts Festival, La Villette, the Philharmonie de Paris, the Festival d’Automne à Paris in collaboration with Pinault Collection (Paris) and others. The New York Times hailed the piece as “the greatest achievement in performance of the last 10 years” and Time Out London called it “a heartbreakingly beautiful elegy for our relationship with the planet”.
Sun & Sea runs at the Vilnius Taxi Park from December 12 through 15. For tickets and more information click here.
For further information, please contact media@sunandsea.lt
