Shadow Text is a choreographic translation of Les Guérillères, a feminist epic novel written by Monique Wittig(1974). Shadow Text seeks to explode the epic novel into the space of a performance. Through sound, text, and movement we transpose the political and aesthetic strategies within Les Guérillères into the realm of choreography, creating a performative installation of reading and listening that investigates methods of collective world making while activating feminist mythologies. 

Shadow Text takes on Wittig’s aesthetic-political project and makes three claims—First, that all political revolution must start with language; Second, that poetics are the location where change can manifest itself on and between our bodies; And third, that language is a means of political resistance and creativity that we all have access to. Shadow Text transposes scenes from the novel onto the bodies of the performers. Through rewritten fragments, Shadow Text aims to place the audience inside a world of words, letting those words act themselves out upon and within the bodies of the audience. Activating a landscape of fragmented scenes, Shadow Text is composed as a collective dream. We use language, sound and the body to guide the audience through an uncanny and decadent imaginary. 

Concept, performance, choreography: Chloe Chignell and Amina Szecsödy

Sound: Amina Szecsödy

Shadow Text has been supported by: The VGC, WorkspaceBrussels, Cité Internationale des Arts, Paris, Kunstencentrum BUDA Kortrijk and Werkstatt Frankfurt.