Fish dance when they are not sleeping (Opera for the Deaf)

Fish dance when they are not sleeping (Opera for the Deaf) is an immersive interdisciplinary opera performance based on a collaboration between two cultures or worlds, the ones who use voice and the ones who use gestures to communicate and create. It is a poetic, surreal vision of the underwater world of strange fish-like creatures encountering a group of humanoid travellers from the future. The meeting of strangers takes place between the unreal world of a dream, with blurred, bended forms, eluding reason and logic, and the hyper-realist raw rationalist world.

This performance is partly an attempt to understand the frustration of Deaf people resulting from their misunderstanding by hearing people, and partly the creation of a space in which both these worlds and types of perception as well as methods of communication intertwine and influence each other. Part of the libretto is created by Ilse Jobse, a Dutch Deaf poet, singer and actress. New technologies (motion sensors, sound and light sensors programmed for “audiovisual translation”, sound and video processing) as well as vibrations, rhythms and choreography – all contribute to an entirely new and unique artistic language.