Revelations

Revelations examines the power of visions and starts out from the striking examples experienced by the 13^th-century Brabant poetess, writer and mystic Hadewych. In the tradition of the Christian mysticism of love, she cultivated an ecstatic love relationship with the divine Other as part of the search for the divine within herself.

Revelations is a multimedia project that takes Hadewych’s visions as its starting point: an impressive, visionary, Christian-inspired plea that has a contemporary counterpart in Mohamed El Bachiri’s A Love Jihad. For Revelations, the composer Wim Henderickx is writing a wordless new work structurally grafted onto a traditional Latin mass, in which inspiration from mediaeval and Renaissance music can be heard. His score is performed by the soprano Lore Binon, Cappella Amsterdam and musicians from the HERMESensemble, and is provided with electronic underpinning by Jorrit Tamminga.

In presenting it onstage, the director Wouter Van Looy is looking for reflections of the Christian-inspired visions in a contemporary city and in the story of Mohamed El Bachiri. He is a Muslim who transforms the indescribable loss of his beloved into a universal plea for a love jihad. The words are related to present-day catastrophes and are extended into the video images by Kurt d’Haeseleer and the costumes by Johanna Trudzinski.

Credits

• Composition | Musical direction • Wim Henderickx
• Direction • Wouter Van Looy
• Video • Kurt d'Haeseleer
• Costume design • Johanna Trudzinski
• Lighting design • Peter Quasters
• Electronics • Jorrit Tamminga
• Soprano • Lore Binon
• Choir • Cappella Amsterdam
• Altviolin | Viola d'amore • Marc Tooten
• Flutes • Karin de Fleyt
• Percussion • Wim Henderickx
• Dramaturgy • Veerle Fraeters
• Performer (video) • Ivan Fatjo
• Assistant dramaturgy | direction • Tom Cuypers