FLEX

Üüve-Lydia Toompere’s solo performance searches for perfection, which must be assembled stone by stone. Before the audience’s eyes, Toompere emerges from her cocoon and transforms on stage into her new alter ego, Flex. Unwaveringly, she designs a perfect space and moment on stage, but it may happen that in the process she herself begins to crumble from the outset. The performance takes viewers to a dislocated gym, a self-improvement laboratory and a parallel reality where the focus is on the impossible capabilities of the individual. The powerhouse instills belief, but also challenges social ideas about demonstrating strength. Üüve-Lydia Toompere is a freelance artist working in Estonia and Berlin who, in her earlier performances, has primarily examined social contexts. Consequently, one of her main practices has been involving society and people themselves in her performances. Her club-dance workshop “Techno Praxis” and the audience-participatory performance “supersocial” have received the most attention. By now, Lydia has also become interested in the club, fetish and pole-dance scenes. In these worlds, she performs as her alter ego Fluxxious. In her first full-length solo performance at Sõltumatu Tantsu Lava, however, the artist brings an entirely new alter ego to the stage. Once again, she seems to step into someone else’s skin and, through the newly created body, opens up an imaginative world. Flex and Fluxxious are Toompere, but in her more extreme form. This fits the contemporary, information-rich world that competitively seeks attention better than Lydia alone. Author, director, choreographer: Üüve-Lydia Toompere
Dramaturg: Siim Tõniste
Lighting designer: Mikk-Mait Kivi
Sound designer: Kenn-Eerik Kannike
Set designer: Niina-Anneli Kaarnamo
Premiere on 5 December at Sõltumatu Tantsu Lava
More information: https://www.stl.ee/lavastused/flex