If I Can’t Dance is proud to present its restaging of
Guy de Cointet’s
Five Sisters in China this November on the invitation of OCAT Shenzhen and as the 2013 edition of the programme ‘OCAT Performs’.
Five Sisters, is a play first presented in 1982. The premise is simple: four
sisters meet each other in their parent’s home and wait for the fifth sister to
arrive. They talk about their lives, doctors, diets, work and holidays. Meanwhile, the California sun
mysteriously provokes their reactions, emotions and moods.
If I Can’t Dance’s restaging of
Five Sisters has toured
extensively throughout Europe and the United States since its premiere
in Amsterdam in 2011. On the occasion of its presentation in China, a
seminar will be held exploring the biopolitics of the dissonant
registers of ‘life’ and ‘lifestyle’ within
Five Sisters,
featuring a keynote lecture by philosopher Peter Pal Pelbart, a response by theatre director Zhao Chuan, curator Nav Haq, and a performance by artist Sara
van der Heide. The seminar will be held as a matinee
programme in conjunction with the performance of the piece on Saturday
evening 16 November.
The seminar will also launch a Mandarin translation of the If I Can’t Dance publication
Five Sisters,
collating materials from the research surrounding the first restaging
of the play since its original appearance in 1982. Produced in
collaboration with OCAT and Gold Wall Press, the Mandarin translation will include an appendix of source materials including the
Five Sisters
script by
Guy de Cointet as well as T. S. Eliot’s ‘The Love Song of J.
Alfred Prufrock’, an excerpt from Herman Melville’s ‘Typee: A Romance of
the South Seas’ and Susan Sontag’s ‘Notes on Camp’.
The English
Five Sisters publication will be available at
the end of 2013, and includes contributions by Marie de Brugerolle,
Snejanka Mihaylova, Elizabeth Orr, an excerpt from the original script
and an annotated interview by Vivian Ziherl with performers Violeta
Sanchez, Einat Tuchman, Adva Zakai, and Veridiana Zurita. This book is
designed by
Will Holder.
