Mandragora

MANDRAGORA

Mandragora explores the exhaustion of contemporary societies shaped by neoliberal capitalism, resurgent nationalisms, and systems rooted in conflict and exploitation.
Emerging from this landscape of fragmentation and suppressed solidarity, the performance unfolds between dance ritual and concert, inviting audiences into a process of collective healing.
Drawing inspiration from the ritual of braiding and from the legacy of women’s labour as a foundation for communal bonds, Mandragora creates a performative space where dance and music awaken archetypal, instinctive, and collective forces. The openness and layered nature of its theatrical imagery evoke associations with witches, the history of their persecution, and the enduring struggle that resonates as a global feminist metaphor of resistance, resilience, and self-organisation.
The encounter between one musician and three contemporary dancers, grounded in attentive listening, play, and mutual responsiveness, generates a delicate yet powerful performative fabric. Through this shared practice, Mandragora becomes an artistic act of summoning the past in order to better understand the present, and a space in which community is not presumed but continually reimagined and recreated through movement, sound, and collective experience.