Events

Music and dance performance

Based on the myth of Orpheus and Eurydice from Ancient Greece, using the latest physics ideas about time.

Creative team of the performance:

Composers | Jūra Elena Šedytė, Albertas Navickas
Choreographer | Martynas Rimeikis
Libretto author | Rimantas Ribačiauskas
Performers | Lora Kmieliauskaitė, Arnas Kmieliauskas (contemporary music ensemble Twenty Fingers Duo)
Dancers | Oleksandra Borodina, Mantas Ūsas
Lighting designer | Arvydas Buinauskas / AB light
Costume designer | Juozas Valenta
Visual communication | Lauryna Narkevičiūtė
Producer | Tarp tylos

In 2023, this performance received four Golden Cross nominations – for music, choreography, lead performance and lighting design. The ensemble Twenty Fingers Duo, which performed the music for this performance, won the Young Creator Award from the Ministry of Culture this year.

Time. Why do we measure it uniformly, but perceive it differently? Do we exist in it, or does it exist in us? Why do we divide it into past, present, and future?
In his book The Order of Time, renowned Italian physicist Carlo Rovelli debunks established myths about time one by one, revealing its subjectivity and questioning the existence of the present. According to the author, quantum physics equations show that "in the fundamental laws describing the mechanisms of the world, there is no difference between the past and the future – between cause and effect, between memory and expectation, between remorse and intention."

Inspired by these ideas about time, the creators of the contemporary ballet Orpheus and Eurydice weave them into one of the most popular stories of Ancient Greece – the myth of Orpheus and Eurydice. The well-known myth tells of Orpheus' journey into the realm of Hades, where he convinces the rulers of the underworld to return his dead wife to him with his songs. Orpheus regains Eurydice on the condition that he does not look back as he leads her out of the underworld. The last-minute glance back and Eurydice's return to the underworld—her second death—remains one of the saddest moments of separation in Western civilization to this day.

In this interpretation of the myth, Orpheus embodies the time we are familiar with, which can be measured and felt, while Eurydice represents what Rovelli describes as “a strange and alien world, but nevertheless our world. It is like reaching a mountaintop where there is only rock, snowfields, and sky. An essential world that emits a dry, clear, and uncomfortable light." Orpheus' journey to Eurydice becomes a journey into timelessness, and their return and separation at the threshold of the cave symbolizes the limitations of our senses in perceiving Eurydice's world—a world beyond time.

Funded by the Lithuanian Council for Culture.