It was a pleasure to perform a new version of Back to the Beautiful with Sandra Chatterjee adapted for the Drava River in Maribor, Slovenia on Nov 8, 2018 at Nardoni dom Maribor.

Back to the Beautiful (Drava) layers poetic and political video images, participatory encounters with the audience, and moments of live performance around the contradictory motifs of water, borders and beauty. Audiences move through an interactive installation that includes texts, videos, embodiment, and direct contact with water through ritual hand-washing and bottling of river water.  Back to the Beautiful (Drava) is the third site-specific adaptation of this participatory performative installation. The work first premiered in Salzburg in 2017 and was inspired by the river Saalach, which forms the border between Germany and Austria, as both a site of natural beauty and potential border tension. In 2018, it was adapted to center the San Lorenzo River, site of the last Chinatown in Santa Cruz, California, while addressing historical Chinese migration and xenophobia in the region. For its Maribor incarnation, the artists adapted the installation by incorporating local memories of the river Drava, resulting in an installation whose images and resonances draw from multiple bodies of water that have served as sites of beauty, migration, and/or national borders: the Saalach, the San Lorenzo, and the Drava.

Choreographers and Performers: Sandra Chatterjee and Cynthia Ling Lee of the Post Natyam Collective
Partners and Financial Support: City of Munich Department of Arts and Culture, Austrian Cultural Forum Ljubljana, Municipality of Maribor, Ministry of Culture, Szene Salzburg and Kuratieren in den szenischen Künsten (University of Salzburg in LMU München).
Organizers: Association Nagib and Narodni dom Maribor
Information: http://www.nd-mb.si/ostalo/narodni-dom-maribor/predstava/nd/back-to-the-beautiful-nazaj-k-lepemu

Drava River, Maribor