Dust
‘For dust thou art, and unto dust shalt thou return.’ – Bible
We are constantly falling apart, slowly dying or turning to dust. We lose parts of ourselves and add them to a community of dust that includes other beings and their repulsion – hair, grains, pollen, pulverised stars, synthetic fibres, minerals, tyre abrasion and dust mites. Dust is dissolution and decay, but also the breeding ground for constantly renewing life. Dust permeates everything and defies any idea of wholeness, completeness, permanence and control.
Dust is an interdisciplinary project with elements of object theatre, visual arts, performance and music theatre. We see a room, a home, slowly falling apart. Just as we fall apart, just as our living environment falls apart, ecosystems, culture, social structures or dreams. Dust is a performative meditation on transience, death and decay. Dust is a theatrical devotion, a vanitas still life, a ritual dissolution of civilisational ballast as liberation, a peeling or shedding of skin. Dust is beauty, peace and serenity.
November 2025 // Theater Rampe, Stuttgart
March 2026 // HochX, Munich
May 2026 // 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 / graphics: Markus Niessner
Assistant: Kristina Arlekinova
DUST is a production by O-Team in cooperation with Theater Rampe. Funded by the State Capital Stuttgart and the Landesverband freier Tanz- und Theaterschaffender Baden-Württemberg e.V. (State Association of Independent Dance and Theatre Producers of Baden-Württemberg) with funds from the Ministry of Science, Research and the Arts of the State of Baden-Württemberg. With the kind support of the Kunstverein Wagenhalle e.V.
Trailer:
“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/)
full Video ( -> direct link to vimeo)
