Dust
“For dust you are, and to dust you shall return.” – The Bible
“We are like the spider. We weave our life and then move along in it. We are like the dreamer who dreams and then lives in the dream. This is true for the entire universe.” – The Upanishads
We are in a constant state of falling apart – a slow dying or turning into dust. We lose parts of ourselves and add them to a collective body of dust that includes other beings and their shedding: hairs, grains, pollen, powdered stars, synthetic fibres, minerals, tyre particles and dust mites. Dust is dissolution and decay, but also the fertile ground for ever-renewing life. Dust permeates everything and defies any idea of wholeness, permanence, enclosure or control. Dust is an interdisciplinary project blending object theatre, visual art, performance and music theatre. We witness a space – a home – that slowly crumbles. As we crumble, too. As our world disintegrates – ecosystems, culture, social structures, dreams.
Dust is a performative meditation on impermanence, death and decay. A theatrical devotion, a vanitas still life, a ritual act of shedding the ballast of civilisation – a release, a peeling away, a molting. Dust is beauty, calm and serenity.
Premiere: 27. November 2025
Theater Rampe, Stuttgart
Team
Artistic direction / concept / space: Samuel Hof, Nina Malotta
Performance / objects: Antje Töpfer, Marius Alsleben, Nina Malotta
Music: Michael Fiedler, Marius Alsleben
Outside eye: Bastian Sistig, Yara Richter
Production / Graphic Design / Fotos: Markus Niessner
PR/ÖA: Kathrin Stärk
Assistant: Kristina Arlekinova
Dust is a production by O-Team in cooperation with Theater Rampe. Funded by the City of Stuttgart and the State Association of Independent Dance and Theatre Professionals Baden-Württemberg e.V. with support from the Ministry of Science, Research and the Arts Baden-Württemberg. With kind support from Kunstverein Wagenhalle e.V.
“Burrowing deeper will not bring us closer to the essence of things, or home at last; it will only generate a lot more dust.
And it is dust all the way down. Fleeting, transient, moving, restless dust. We will not suddenly happen upon some stable molten core. Maybe the striking idea of our times is that the mass project of arrival (which modernity operationalizes), of seeking secure foundations, and finding true norths must now give way to the troubling fade of things.
Our vocation must now be that of learning how to live in the midst of the fade; learning how to honour the light of twilight; learning how to befriend our passing; learning how to grieve and fall apart; learning that failure is generative; learning that just because one is lost doesn’t mean one is on the wrong path; learning that the sacred is immanent; learning that to love is not to reach out to another but to recognize we are the other; and, learning that if we always had our way, there’d be no point to the journey. Maybe in learning to live here, right here, we unleash a spirited joy – the music of which escaped us when we strained to own it.”
Báyò Akómoláfé
(https://www.bayoakomolafe.net/post/)
