Ocean Bound

Coastlines change beyond recognition; familiar landscapes disappear. Against the backdrop of climate change and the loss of environments with which we are connected and that hold us together, Romanian choreographer Sergiu Matis addresses the question of how moving images affect moving bodies in his new work “Ocean Bound.”

Video material created specifically for the project focuses on habitats at the interface of land and sea, human habitation and forests — places where rising water levels are increasingly shaping life due to deforestation of mangrove forests, coastal erosion and changes in tides. Audiences and performers move freely on stage between different video projections and create a choreography in which bodies and images are interwoven within a shared environment shaped by the ocean.

“Ocean Bound” creates space for the deep sense of loss and for forms of grief for which we lack language and rituals. The performers' bodies are moved by the complex emotions of ecological grief. This creates choreography on the border between digital and analog, between documentation and fiction — and provides space to bear the weight of the loss, to grieve and to develop a moving, hopeful and poetic language from the fragments.