In My Beginning Is My End

What are we made of? From whom do we descend? Who or what will we become in the next few decades? It all seems obvious, but once asked aloud, it’s easy to get lost in search of answers. We tend to look for them by exploring boundaries and our own limitations. We look for them in the cult of youth and of idealized bodies, pushing the boundaries of virtuosity and of physical agility. But what has passed no longer exists, and what will be has not yet come. Everything that really is – is now. Where is the past and the future then? The body and mind are changing, as we face the fear of emptiness, but also the great beauty of old age. A beauty that is objectively absent, but that exists in us, in our minds. The past remains in our memory and the future in our anticipation. The performance by the Lublin Dance Theatre takes place in this state between remembering and forgetting, fear and hope. It aspires to be a memory and at the same time a future disappointment or fulfillment, like in TS Eliot’s “Four Quartets”. 

This multidimensional performance is also a meeting point for creators representing diverse fields, places, origins and ages. It asks about our collective and individual attitudes about the past and about what is yet to come. It is a game of plunging into nostalgia, recalling good and bad old times. It is an expression of fear of old age and death – as much as of the expectation of happiness or of that one artistic moment that we have always craved to experience.