DEEPDREAMINGDRYDESERT

September 2016, De Nieuwe Anita, Amsterdam Free Fringe Festival, Amsterdam. 

 

"I went to the desert the other night.

And I ate it all.

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I ate all the vast, silent, beautiful, wild desert.

​

I was eating for hours.

But, in the end,

I ate it all.

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I ate all its huge, grainy, sensual rocks

humming to me with ancient libido.

I couldn ’t resist.

I ate them all.

 

And all the myriads of granules of sand

that sing in the evenings

accompanying the wind.

I opened humbly my mouth

and let them come in.

All these granules of sand

were entering my mouth for hours.

And I allowed them all to come in.

I ate them all.

 

And all the thick and loud silence

that was spreading around me,

till where my eyes could not even imagine there was still World.

The loudest silence I had ever heard!

I opened all my ears

and my inner ears

and my ear labyrinths.

As widely as I could.

 

And the loud silence entered

and poured slowly

deep down into my heart.

Slowly, slowly,

it started pouring,

dripping drop by drop,

deep into my heart.

And there,

when it reached my heart,

it started slowly licking it.

And embracing it.

The deep loud desert silence

embraced fully my heart

and soothed it.

 

And I.

​

I stayed like this.

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With my mouth and ears open.

 

And my heart silently embraced.

 

For hours.

 

Until all the sand was entered.

 

And all the silence was poured.

 

And all the rocks were ingested.

 

Until all the desert was completely empty.

 

Until I had eaten it all.

 

So, I ate all the desert the other night.

And now it lives all inside my belly.

It lives in me,

breathes in me,

oozes in me,

sings in me.

 

And Me!

I am here.

​

With this desert living inside my belly.

​

Looking at you looking at me.

​

And I know that you know.

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That I will never be the same again."

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Arvind, an adventurous guitar player from the Hague, and Electra, a Greek dance artist based in Amsterdam, found themselves in two different deserts last year.

Coming back- one from the salty desert of Chile and the other from the far west desert landscapes of California- they realized that they were profoundly altered.

In their performance, they recreate sound and movement landscapes inspired by the sand, the rocks, the wind, the silence, and the things that cannot be seen, but can only be felt.

 

Arvind Ganga: Guitar, objects

Electra Kouloumpi: Dance

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