Ways to Nowhere is a research led inter-disciplinary project that explores the pregnant nothingness that shines between Butoh practice, Dimitrios Skyllas’ study of lamentation in traditional music (Orthodox, Byzantine, Gagaku) and representations of the divine in Orthodox iconography.

Nothingness is interrogated in relation to terms such as emptiness, void, silence, stillness and in the wider context of questions around representation of the metaphysical. In particular the term ‘MA” from Japanese aesthetics is central to the creative investigation.

Through an examination of stillness and silence, this project thus researches musical onstage compositions where the ‘gap’ (MA) between actions and phrases reveals a fertile field of possibilities, rather than a dead space between linear dramatic events.

How can music reveal and serve the silences between phrases, and how can the moving body reveal the stillnesses between gestures?

How do we attune performers and audience to the silence and empty space between actions?

The methodologies to make these questions tangible draw upon Lamentations, Butoh and Orthodox Iconography.

Ways to Nowhere is led by Simon Gleave and involves Composer Dimitrios Skyllas, Choreographer/Butoh Practitioner Marie-Gabrielle Rotie, Physical Theatre practitioners Matej Matejka, Korina Kokkali and Dylan Read and Light Designer Eliza Alexandropoulou.