Šeiko Dance Theatre: Premiere! Dance Performance “meme”

A dance performance dedicated to adolescence

@gigi.use* spends her free time watching birds and (sometimes) people. @ecccka is a true gamer who can spend hours in the strangest body positions. Though his personality is hard for the outside world to figure out, he reveals his true colours in the world of online games. @ugnekavka is a disciplined punk: a model daughter in her parents’ eyes, but her rebellious side emerges when she experiments with her hair. And @a.carlocarloo is the joker among his friends, fond of testing boundaries, so his jokes sometimes turn into bullying.

Although they are different, they are all connected by the same world of memes. The performance plays on the ambiguity of the Lithuanian words “memas” (meme) and “mėmė” (a simpleton). This makes it possible to talk about identity, relationships with others, and the contradictory power of humour—the ability to bring people closer and unite them, but also to divide or hurt them.

The choreography, too, follows the logic of creating memes: what happens onstage is constantly observed, reworked, placed in new contexts, and given new meanings each time. Balancing humour and sensitivity, playfulness and painful experiences, the performance explores what the language of memes says about us: what matters to us, what we value, what we condemn, what we fear, and what we dream of.

So who am I? The one who laughs? The one being laughed at? The one who watches everything? Or perhaps the one no one really knows?

*Follow the dancers on Instagram.

Choreographer and creator of the idea: Ema Senkuvienė
Dancers: Gintarė Marija Ūsė, Edvardas Kažarnovičius, Ugnė Kavaliauskaitė, Carlo Adrian Bibiano
Lighting designer: Vilius Vilutis
Stylist: Lukas Svirplys
Producer: Judita Strumilaitė
Theatre artistic director: Agnijas Šeiko
Production team: Greta Seiliūtė, Gabrielė Dirmaitė, Darius Berulis

The theatre’s activities are partly funded by: Klaipėda City Municipality, Lithuanian Council for Culture, Neringa City Municipality