9^th Contemporary Opera Festival NOA

21/10/2025, Tuesday, 19.00

22/10/2025, Wednesday, 19.00

Black hall of the Arts Printing House (Šiltadaržio St. 6, Vilnius)

Anonymous Dances

Documentary fiction

A room bathed in twilight. Ordinary chairs, laconic details of a reception desk, or, perhaps, an office interior, musical instruments scattered around the corners. At the back of the room is a mysterious door, through which strange, unearthly sounds and a dim, cold light sometimes seep through. What kind of place is this? A waiting room in a medical facility, a gathering place for a religious community, or perhaps an underground hideout?

A couple of employees from this institution are already on site, quietly performing their daily tasks – registering and sorting arrivals, and escorting them to wait. People gather here in search of something, but they themselves do not know exactly what. It might be help, perhaps salvation, or could be just a brief oblivion. They patiently wait their turn to enter the place where, it seems, all their problems will be solved. But is it really possible to help them?

Anonymous Dances is an interdisciplinary work that uses theatrical means to explore various forms of addiction, the desperate search for dopamine, and the relentless desire to escape reality. The creative team took a broad look at these themes, sharing personal experiences, asking what lies behind addictions, and searching for diverse forms of their expression.

The performance is based on action-oriented dramaturgy discovered through improvisations. Important role is also played by music, which combines contemporary electronics and baroque aesthetics. All of this helps the actors break free from the constraints of traditional psychological theatre. The characters’ monologues are created by subtly interweaving the creators’ real experiences with fictional ones, deliberately blurring the line between what has been experienced and what has been acted out. These stories could be true testimonies, but they could also be carefully crafted fiction. No one can be sure what is really true.

Director: Darius Gumauskas

Playwright: Rimantas Ribačiauskas (dramaturgy created in collaboration with the creative team)

Composer: Vytautas Leistrumas

Choreographer: Erika Vizbaraitė

Set designer: Renata Valčik

Video artist: Vytautas Narbutas

Lighting designer: Vilius Vilutis

Sound engineer: Paulius Trijonis

Producers: Šiauliai State Drama Theatre, Operomanija

Anonyms – Actors from the Šiauliai State Drama Theatre: Nomeda Bėčiūtė, Jūratė Budriūnaitė, Tautvydas Galkauskas, Monika Geštautaitė, Dalius Jančiauskas, Rusnė Navickaitė, Severinas Norgaila, Inga Norkutė, Vilija Paleckaitė, Juozas Žibūda; countertenor Vaidas Bartušas.

Director Darius Gumauskas:

The idea for the performance arose in a paradoxical context – at a party where a Baroque piece was being played on a spinet, and the audience, modern people, reacted vividly to the old music. The unexpected clash of two eras – the atmosphere of a 21st-century party and Baroque music – created a powerful image that let us to briefly escape from the worries of everyday life: poverty, depression, unhappy love, financial or moral crises, and the increasingly palpable threat of war. Anonymous Dances is a performance about waiting for the worst, hoping that it can be avoided or pretending that nothing bad is happening. It is about the desire to survive, to change, or even to experience inner enlightenment. It is about abstinence of one’s former life, which has brought people to a waiting room where they may be able to save themselves. Finally, it is about the realisation that the saviour does not necessarily come from outside – everyone is responsible for themselves, however, we are all among people.

Playwright Rimantas Ribačiauskas:

This performance features a large group of talented actors from the Šiauliai Drama Theatre. But it is not just them – the director, choreographer, and even the composer all have acting backgrounds. So, it is no surprise that the play is very theatrical, born from an actor’s view of the world – intuitive, irrational, sensual, or even a little mystical. It is interesting to find oneself in such a temporary tribe, to discover one’s place in it, thus facing one of my strongest addictions, from which I had strayed a little – my addiction to theatre – to see if it still “works” and to check how strong the hangover is going to be.

Composer Vytautas Leistrumas:

The musical and sonic content of the performance relies on the principles of collective creativity and ensemble performance. The live music (using a spinet, synthesizer, drums, and other objects) and the acting improvisations arise from the mutual listening, trust, and spontaneous action of the troupe members, refusing to judge either themselves or others. The emphasis is on the “musical zen” – creation through communion and intuition, rather than premeditation. The connection with the Baroque is felt on stage, revealed through the sounds of the spinet and the principles of improvisation and ensemble playing characteristic of that period. The process of joint creation opens up unexpected possibilities for individual and collective creativity, aiming to convey to the audience an authentic, free, and universal experience of being together.

Choreographer Erika Vizbaraitė:

The choreography for the performance Anonymous Dances was created in response to the directing tasks and stage situations. The movement expression was born through creative improvisations, during which we sought for actions that would echo the dramaturgy and physical expressions of the characters, reinforcing the inner states of the characters. Movement is not just a form here; it manifests itself as a sensation, a reaction, or an emotion arising from the relationship between the artists’ bodies and their surroundings. The work is dominated by the organic motion of the characters, ranging from minimalist impulses of movement to massive physical structures and compositions. The choreography transforms the space, and the space affects the characters themselves. Movement in the work arises both as a calculated creative decision and, at times, as an unexpected yet genuine impulse.

Duration: 90 min.

Premiere: September 26, 2025, Small Hall of the Šiauliai State Drama Theatre

In Lithuanian with English surtitles

The event will be filmed and photographed. The material will be distributed publicly.