Oil is a deadly pearl

Sun Eaters is a contemporary folk dance about the mythological origins of petrol and the viscous darkness hidden in ancient dances.

What happens when folk culture and folk dance are used to embrace the darkness of our era? Oil and folk dance are both collective ruins – divided, collective memories. Sun Eaters is an attempt to portray what kind of folklore and folk dance could belong in the current political landscape. Dark folk dance is alive, exhumed, incarnate, waving back at us.

Sun Eaters is inspired by petro-magic realism, horror poetry and the tradition of vengeful dances. Oil as a hyper phenomenon can be incarnated, by letting out the mad shepherds, the diseased gods, the Sun Eaters.

The piece is steeped in doom metal, pre-Islamic iconography, Levantine maqams and cursed Norwegian tunes. It twists and betrays what it summons, and rekindles with the cruelty of oil to incarnate its deadly, seductive smile.

There is no East, 
There may never be a Sun, 
Laila Malik

…

If Oil is an immense, collective, anonymous material, it can only be accessed through another similarly collective and anonymous material: folk dance is a perfect device for this purpose. It is alive, unburied, incarnated, and it waves back at us.

Sun Eaters is inspired by Cyclonopedia from Reza Negarestani, the editing techniques of Ari Aster, pre-islamic iconography, the studies of mesopotamian rituals concerning snakes, the cult of Pazuzu, the horror poetry coming from With Deer by Aase Berg, the mythical poems of Laila Malik, the description of bodies in Hassan Blasim’s novels, the movie The House is Black by Forough Farrokhzad, and living documentation of exalted folk dances from Norway, Brittany and West Asia (Iran and Palestine).

‘One must grasp oil as an ultimate Tellurian lubricant, or a vehicle for epic narratives.’
Reza Negarestani, Cyclonopedia

more  info here...