116006

Movement performance

Premiere: 19 August 2026

New East cultural space, Daugavpils, Latvia

First, the word was taken away.

Then the voice, the face, the memory and the right to resist.

The body still remembers freedom, although the mind no longer knows what it means.

Movement resists the command, but each act of resistance becomes slower.

The will searches for somewhere to hide.

All that remains is a transparent shell.

Perhaps still alive.

Human.

We do not know how it began. We arrive when the process is already underway. The rules have been written. The language cannot be understood. Someone outside decides when to move, when to stop, when to eat and when to sleep. Somewhere deeper, something that was meant to remain hidden continues to breathe: suppressed rage, an old trauma, the animal within.

116006 is a hermetic observation of a human being’s disappearance — a movement performance about the fragile structure of mind, spirit and body; about the pursuit of freedom under conditions that suppress every expression of autonomy; about the breaking of the will and the attempt to find it again.

Looking through a transparent wall, as though into an aquarium, the audience observes the physical existence of a single human being. Two forces gradually take possession of her body: a manipulator issuing commands from above and an animal rage awakening from below. They are not competing for the human being.

They are dividing her.

Here, the human does not become an animal.

The human becomes ███████████

The physical language of the performance draws inspiration from the Japanese avant-garde dance form butoh — a practice concerned not with the external shape of movement but with the body’s internal transformation. Movement emerges at the point where social identity begins to collapse, familiar bodily language ceases to function and all that remains onstage is something that cannot be named.

The performance offers no single explanation for what the audience witnesses. Manipulation, subjugation and violence are not presented as self-contained events with clearly defined beginnings and endings. Instead, violence becomes a process that gradually enters a person’s movements, sense of self and capacity to make independent decisions.

There are no answers — only a space for searching. The performance invites the audience to let go of detached analysis and allow their sensations, fears and associations to form their own stories within this clouded mirror.

This is a performance in which a human being attempts to remain human.

Initial Performances

18 August 2026 — dress rehearsal, New East cultural space, Daugavpils

19 August 2026 — premiere, New East cultural space, Daugavpils

The premiere was followed by a conversation with the creative team, offering the audience an opportunity to discuss the questions raised by the work, share their responses and interpretations, and speak directly with its creators.

Creative Team

Director: Eduards Beļnikovs

Movement artist: Vanda Gibovska

Performer: Viktorija Kovaļova

Dramaturg: Marianna Stasiva

Set and costume designer: Otto Titovs

Composer: Vladimirs Sklema

Lighting designer: Eduards Beļnikovs

Lighting operator: Vitālijs Kapustins

Sound operator: Jegors Afoničs

Producer and projection operator: Alina Hačetlova

Design: Joren Dobkiewicz, Anna Jureviča

Assistant: Viktorija Samušonoka

Organised and produced by: New East Culture Institute

The performance was created as part of the project The Border of Silence: Voices of Latgale Against Violence.

Funded by the European Union. The views and opinions expressed are those of the author or authors only and do not necessarily reflect those of the European Union or the European Commission. Neither the European Union nor the granting authority can be held responsible for them.