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Choreographer’s word:

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I began planning this work in 2023, but little by little I have come to understand that, in truth, its foundations were sown much earlier. Perhaps already when I first remember dreaming, and recognized the shadows and figures of those dreams walking beside me. Perhaps when I played near my childhood home and watched how the frost formed flowery shapes on the surface of the Black brook. Or when, years ago, I lay for long periods of time in a river during a butoh course in the hills of Italy, trying to understand the embodiment of the current within myself. Or when a choreographer I worked with in Irleand gave me a book that speaks of an all-knowing mother and an old woman who sings to the bones — a book that reappeared before me again almost ten years later. Which in turn, reminded me once again of a porcelain plate from my childhood home, on which Lemminkäinen’s mother is sitting on the banks of the Tuonela River next to her dead son. As a child, that somber painting drew me in with a mixture of fear and wonder.

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From countless encounters and moments of this kind, a movement has emerged, one that has guided me towards this work. In other words, one thing has led to another and appeared to me in unexpected yet ordinary places, but at a moment that felt almost predestined, as if shouting, “Look here, I have something to tell you”.

All in all, working on this process has struck me as a kind of archaeology of the subconscious: a physical opening up and delving into the layers of memory, dreams, archetypes, and cultural narratives. I explore the relationship between movement, speech, sound, and writing, as well as how personal bodily narratives connect to broader social structures. I have found common ground between my own experiences and those found in literature and art; I have freely associated ideas and sought to look beneath the stories and into moments where interpretation can open up new directions. Myths and ancient tales serve, above all, as materials in my work through which private experience can become part of collective memory.

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The title of the work, Riverrun, strikes me as multi-layered. It brings to mind a river as a stream of time, as memory, and as a kind of archetypal image of the body: as motherland, as lineage, and as a movement that continues even after destruction. Riverrun is also the opening word of James Joyce’s ‘Finnegans Wake’. In Joyce’s book, this word is linked to a circular structure in which the end of the work seems to flow back to the beginning. Through this reference, our own ‘Riverrun’ work also falls within the realm of non-linear time. It does not suggest a linear journey, but rather a loop, a repetition and a stream of consciousness.

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I have been in deep and clear waters; I have taken time and asked for guidance. I have been in the desert and in the woods. I have allowed myself to be carried by the current, not knowing exactly where I will end up, but knowing that I will arrive somewhere. Perhaps into a dark current from which a new moon rises, perhaps into daybreak, or perhaps at the threshold of what only reveals itself in the running river.

-Annamari