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The puppet Olimpia’s virtuoso coloratura aria is performed by a giant electromechanically choreographed marionette built from highly patinated scrap machine parts. The music is ‘coloratura’ in its original sense – coloured or embellished – yet also implies a re-colouring of Offenbach’s aria from “The tales of Hoffmann”.

The choreography is both a response to Heinrich Kleist’s homage to the marionette (1810), ‘the most graceful of all dancers whose non self conscious movements simply obey the realm of purely mechanical forces’, and yet at the same time it is a staging of an anorexic yearning for a body without skin, flesh or psyche.

The marionette consists of nine body parts connected – via a string system– to 15 computer directed servo engines, attached to an aluminium frame in the ceiling. Marionette height 300 cm. Frame 240×240 cm2.

CONCEPT, PUPPETEER AND MOVEMENT PROGRAMMING:
Åsa Unander-Scharin

MECHATRONICS AND SOFTWARE:
Magnus Lundin

ARIA:
Jaques Offenbach
(from Les racontes d’Hoffmann, 1881)

SINGER:
Jeanette Bjurling
(recording: Lars-Göran Ehn)

MUSIC:
Carl Unander-Scharin

LIGHT DESIGN:
Anders Larsson 

DURATA:
4.30 minutes

PERFORMANCES:

Reaktorhallen, KTH, 2010
Operadagen Rotterdam, The Netherlands, 2012

PHOTO:
Rune Ahlström and
Carl Unander-Scharin

VIDEO:
The Flock/Kerstin Grunditz

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