What is said cannot be unsaid. What is unspoken is alluded to, wrapped in metaphor, layered in allegory, gestured at. What is gestured at, is not silence.
The Mutables weaves cutting edge technology for speech production with mythographies of the feminine monstrous to expand and reorient our intuitions for what can be put into words. Using a unique sensor-based instrument for embodied speech called BodyMouth, this eerie performance intertwines bodies and vocals as dancers sound out words phoneme-by-phoneme by enacting specific gestures in sequence, turning the body quite literally into a mouth. Situated at the edge of experimental opera and dance, the piece is inspired by female forest creatures in Balkan folklore called ielele whose voices were said to lead men astray and who could render listeners instantly mute. The project is a meditation on the question: What does it mean to have a voice?—a provocation to the bleak histories of totalitarian rule where alternate modes of speech became an urgent form of survival and resistance.
