October 6 - 12, 2025 - Times do vary
What can be said cannot be unsaid. What cannot be said, can be said with indirection: can be alluded to, implied, wrapped in metaphor, joked about, layered in allegory, gestured at. And what can be gestured at is never silent.
The Mutables weaves cutting edge technology for speech production with mythographies of the feminine monstrous to expand and reorient our intuitions for what can be put into language. Using a unique sensor-based instrument for embodied speech called BodyMouth, this eerie performance intertwines bodies and vocals as dancers sound out words phoneme-by-phoneme by enacting specific gestures in sequence, turning the body quite literally into a mouth. Situated at the edge of experimental opera and dance, the piece is inspired by female forest creatures in Balkan folklore called ielele whose voices were said to lead men astray and who could render listeners instantly mute. The project is a meditation on the question What does it mean to have a voice?—a provocation to the bleak histories of totalitarian rule where alternate modes of speech became an urgent form of survival and resistance.
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