EREQUIEM

Screen danceCamera - Vytaute VilkelyteEdit - Anton OvchinnikovDuration 8 minutes

On Erequiem is a story about a body that tries to rise again in a place where even nature has partially died.In the cormorant colony of the Curonian Spit, the trees stand exposed like bones - their leaves burned away by the birds’ corrosive droppings. The soil is saturated with toxins, the air is carved open with screams. This landscape survives not because of, but despite everything.
Into this terrain enters a figure in a dragon mask.Not a predator, not a monster - but an extinct creature, one that has forgotten its own strength and now moves cautiously, touching dead wood, searching for balance in foreign ground. The dragon is a memory of former power, a being that should have vanished, yet still tries to push a root into hostile earth.
That is why the title Erequiem carries two forces pulling in opposite directions:erectio - the impulse to rise from ash;requiem - the echo of everything already lost.
The protagonist drifts between these states.His body crawls out of sand, merges with fallen trunks, struggles against branches as if wrestling with fragments of himself. The dragon doesn’t reign here - he persists, learns, observes.
And he learns from the cormorants.From birds that survive in a toxic environment where even trees have surrendered.From creatures that breathe chemicals and still guard their nests.From beings whose cries cut louder than fear.
He looks for strength in them - not gentle, not human, but the raw biological force of survival, the kind that grows even in poisoned soil. He listens to their harsh sounds, studies their movements as if they carry instructions for how to live when the world is no longer a home.
Because the dragon is not the return of a myth.He is a dead species trying to relearn life from those who managed to endure.
Erequiem is a film about regeneration inside a landscape that offers no welcome, no pity, no guarantees.About a body that insists on growing despite the chemistry, despite the fatigue, despite the requiem.About reclaiming strength in the very place where it seemed impossible.

Choreographer, performer, composer Anton OvchinnikovCamera - Vytaute VilkelyteBlack O!Range Dance Productions
August, 2024Curonian Spit, Lithuania