A Point of No Return is a choreographic weave of sounds that allows the collective memory of its performers unravel from words to tones and stories to abstraction. Covering centuries, the collected literary quotes filter through the performers’ bodies, voices and memories, inducing a fragile composition that meets the alive – and mortal human body. Language and flesh materialize in a continuum, processing stories written and told throughout our time. Told stories overlap, change shape and degenerate like the moribund human species.

”Whatever happens – and death always does happen – we will have been and nothing can change that. Not even death itself.” -Rosi Braidotti, The Ethics of Becoming Imperceptible

The starting point of the performance is the desire to explore the awareness of one’s own death and abstract thinking: abilities that are often understood as specifically bound to humanness. The working group approaches these features as something that cut through the different aspects of human cultures; as factors behind our dominant role in the ecosystem, our relation to other beings, our pains, our art, our religions and our need for glory.

Working group:
Choreography and performance: Mikko Niemistö, Jan Nyberg and Tuuli Vahtola
Supported by: Arts Promotion Centre Finland
In collaboration with: Köttinspektionen dans (Uppsala), C.off (Stockholm), Kekäläinen & Company and Mad House Helsinki.
Picture: Tuuli Vahtola