ZINKY BOYS
From 1979 to 1989, one million Soviet soldiers participated in a devastating war in Afghanistan. About 15.000 of them were sent back home in black, sealed zinc coffins, and up to a million and a half Afghans lost their lives. Belarusian writer Svetlana Aleksievich gives the Soviet soldiers, nurses, mothers and widows a voice from the war in Afghanistan; unbearable and poignant testimony to the true nature of war and its consequences for an entire generation.
Text: Svetlana Aleksievich
Translation: Jan Hansen
Cast: Jesper Hyldegaard, Marina Bouras,
Charlotte Munck and Brian Hjulmann
Director/editing: Andreas Dawe
Dramaturg: Pernille Krag
Composer: Nini Julia Bang
Set designer: Julie Forchhammer
Lighting designer: Mikkel Jensen
Sound designer: Gregers Kjar
Manufacturer: AKUT360
Co-producer: Husets Teater
A THOUSAND TONGUES
A declaration of love for the human voice and fragility of life.
A THOUSAND TONGUES is a concert and a theatrical performance. It is an eruption of visual born from sound, and a tapestry of traditional music from all over the world, performed and conceived by Nini Julia Bang as a solo performance.
In ten different languages, Bang traverses music that spans her several year travels from Iran, Norway, Spain, Iceland, Greece, Mongolia, and Georgia. Both a celebration of cross-cultural expression, spanning from Icelandic lullabies to the Quran, and a deeply personal interrogation of Bang’s own life experiences, A THOUSAND TONGUES is a visual and sonic resonating chamber, exploring isolation, the unknown, vulnerability, and the veil between this world and the other.
With a pristine, oceanic, sparse, symbolic visual landscape created in service of, and inspired by the sound of Nini’s voice by director Samantha Shay, Nini traverses, is enveloped, and thrashes against a multidimensional landscape, offering herself as a vessel and resonating chamber to the public.
A THOUSAND TONGUES was originally presented at the Theatre Olympics in Wroclaw in Poland in connection with the European Capital of Culture 2016, co-produced by Source Material and The Grotowski Institute.
Nominated for Best Original Piece and Best Lighting at the Icelandic Theatre Awards Gríman 2018.
MUSIC VIDEOS
Her music is a meld of traditional folk songs combined with oceanic electronics and meditative loops. Her multi dimensional voice has been described as haunting and heart wrenching.
My debut EP, A THOUSAND TONGUES, is a collection of six tracks that is a celebration of cross cultural expression, each track in collaboration with different female musicians from Iceland.
In six different languages, Nini traverses, is enveloped, and thrashes against a multi dimensional sonic landscape, offering herself as a vessel and resonating chamber in a dialogue of cross cultural expression, and diverse collaborations.
The EP was released in 2018 on the American label Source Material.
SOURCE MATERIAL COLLECTIVE
Source Material is an international company producing theatre, dance, and film works directed by Samantha Shay. The company’s work has been described as visually stunning, musically and physically driven, and ritualistic. Source Material is rooted in multi-cultural artistic legacy, drawing inspiration from influences all over the world. Source Material recognizes that diverse forms of storytelling not only represent the beauty of the global community, but fosters individual and collective belonging.
I was instrumental in the making of
HOUSE OF THE LIVING is a new dance theatre piece inspired by Henrik Ibsen’s feminist masterpiece Hedda Gabler. It is a psychosexual grande ballet, and a personal reckoning, excavating the buried selves that live within the forms we call man and woman.
KING LEAR harkens back to the very first form of theatre, the lamentation rites. When women would gather after a death in their community, and with their voices, created a space for the shooing of the soul from one realm to the other.
OF LIGHT is an interdisciplinary performance in which darkness is our initiator, nightly ritual, and a womb from which we emerge. OF LIGHT envelops the audience in music from modern original pieces to pre-Christian incantations, exploring how human beings are light bearers, and how the human voice, both invisible and perceptible, creates light.
TEATR ZAR
TEATR ZAR is a multinational group formed during its annual research expeditions to Georgia in the years 1999–2003. During these expeditions, the group collected much musical material, the core of which is a group of centuries-old polyphonic songs that have their roots in the beginning of the human era and are probably the oldest forms of polyphony. ‘Zar’ is the name of the funeral songs performed by the Svaneti tribe who inhabit the high regions of the Caucasus, in North-West Georgia.
The work of TEATR ZAR is an attempt to demonstrate that theatre does not only pertain to the Greek ‘thea’ – seeing – but that it is something that above all should be heard. From such hearing, deep images are born that would be impossible to create even by means of the most modern theatre technology; where even the body of a singing actor shines and emanates with the energy of sound, of the song that lies within it.
From 2006-2018 I performed in all three parts of 'Gospels of Childhood. The Triptych':
'Overture' (2003), 'Caesarean Section. Essays on suicide' (2007) and 'Anhelli. The Calling.' (2009).
HAMLET PRIVATE
Hamlet entirely for you. Having not just a seat in the first row but the only seat there is.
An exclusive experience. One on one. Simply private.
In a personal encounter, without stage lights or special effects, purely relying on the magic of the imagination, performer Nini Bang creates the world of Hamlet directly in your head and takes you individually to ponder Hamlet's big questions.
The spectator can choose whether to see the show in Danish or English.
Concept and directing - Martina Marti
Visual design - Emma Suominen
with - Nini Julia Bang
Production - Gnab Collective & Secret Hotel
Supporters - Kone Foundation, City of Helsinki Cultural Office
