The Woman Who Married a Shrimp
The project has its own website where you can buy tickets & NFTs, and get more information.
Premiere: 15th March 2024 at Grusomhetens Teater in Oslo & worldwide online
“The Woman Who Married a Shrimp" confronts the permanent and immutable nature of blockchain technology with the ephemeral nature of a live dance performance. We experiment with inverting the principles of these realms by encoding temporary and transformative movements into a series of non-fungible tokens (NFT), while at the same time creating a choreography driven by the idea of collecting physical and digital gestures.
The dance performance unfolds simultaneously in real life (IRL) on a theatre stage and online via live-stream. Both audiences are gathered for the contemporary way of "wisdom exchange" that used to happen around a campfire and now takes place between physical and digital dimensions. The project draws inspiration from an Inuit myth of the same name, in which magical and human realms intertwine, and where the act of peering through a hole in between them brings dangerous and unexpected consequences. Similarly, the performance navigates the challenges of bridging physical and digital spaces. The concepts of blockchain technology and dance choreography hold up a mirror to both audiences: What will you see when these two worlds collide and intersect?
Viewers online and in the theatre are invited to reflect on new ways of coming together and to experience, each on their own premises, the common ritual of recreating and sharing the myth anew.
The Inuit myth:
The myth tells the story of a beautiful woman who had no desire to marry. But one day her parents made a startling discovery: she had indeed married... a shrimp... The shrimp remained invisible to everyone except the woman, and the only sign of its presence was the strange laughter behind the curtain where the woman and the shrimp slept.
To the woman's parents, the shrimp seemed like a useless husband who could not support his family. However, when the village went through hard times, the shrimp, which took human form, showed remarkable fishing skills and provided for the whole household.
The woman, the shrimp and their two children lived happily, but the mother's curiosity about the invisible son-in-law remained unsatisfied. One night, the old woman secretly peeked through a hole in the curtain that separated the bedrooms of the two generations, to see the shrimp. The shrimp turned out to be so ugly that the mother-in-law died on the spot.
NFTs & IRL:
The theatre stage transforms into a ritual space where symbolic gestures are re-invented and collected during a duet between a dancer and his holographic alter ego. The NFT transactions - additional gestures - can directly affect the stage performance. The moment an online audience member activates their purchased NFT, Azumaru will act out the choreography associated with that specific NFT. This action mirrors the "act of looking through the hole" from the Inuit myth, which allows us to cross a threshold and gain insight into a hidden world. As an audience member in the theatre, you will receive a secret to hold or to use as an interpretative key to the dance.
The performance may last between 45 and 60 minutes, depending on how many NFT transactions are made during the show. You do not need to have an understanding of NFTs or be an active user of blockchain to fully enjoy the stage performance. As an audience member in the theatre, you are not allowed to make NFT transactions during the live show. However, you may purchase the NFTs as a collectible before or after the show, or you can be an online participant on another day that the show runs.
Concept and choreography: Karolina Bieszczad-Stie
Dancer: Azumaru
Full-stack tech engineer: Eric Bieszczad-Stie
Music composer: Simen Korsmo-Robertsen
Digital artist: Damien Serban
Costume and stage designer: Zofia Jakubiec
Lighting designer and cinematographer: Stein Stie
Dramaturgical adviser: Thomas Schaupp
Web-content editor and production assistant: Aleksandra Piotrowska
Consultants: Jan Christensen, Yassiek Stochastic
Supported by: Kulturdirektoratet, Fond for lyd og bilde, Oslo Kommune, FFUK, NOTAM