Decrepit Beauty

Decrepit Beauty is a new cross-aesthetic performance by DON GNU about the moment when something begins to falter.

On stage, performers Kristoffer Louis Andrup Pedersen and Jeppe Kaas Vad meet in a universe of moving structures, newly composed music and shifting spaces. Bodies wrestle with materials, walls and gravity, whilst the set design slowly collapses, transforms and re-emerges in new forms.

The performance stems from a collaboration with the Italian sculptor Graziano Locatelli, whose works revolve around cracks, erosion and the imprint of time on the materials. In Decrepit Beauty, DON GNU explores how these cracks can be translated into movement, stage design and living bodies.

At the same time, the performance engages with the body’s own transformations. Not as a defeat, but as part of life. What happens when something can no longer be kept perfect? When control is relinquished and something else is allowed to emerge?

The music is composed by Alice Carreri and performed live by Aarhus Sinfonietta in a staged collaboration between physical theatre, opera, choral works and symphonic music.

Decrepit Beauty is directed by Jannik Elkær with dramaturgical support from Betina Rex and developed in collaboration with Dynamo Workspace, Bora Bora and a number of Danish and international artists.

The performance is an exploration of decay, resistance and raw vitality. Of the cracks where something shatters – and where something new might begin.

“I don’t see decay as the opposite of beauty. Quite the contrary. Sometimes something only comes to life when it ceases to be perfect.”
– Jannik Elkær

DON GNU creates physical theatre at the intersection of action, poetry and humanity.

The company was founded in 2010 by Jannik Elkær and Kristoffer Louis Andrup Pedersen, who continue to serve as artistic directors. Over the years, DON GNU has developed a distinctive theatrical language in which dance, acrobatics, physical theatre and visual storytelling merge in performances that balance the spectacular with the vulnerable.

With humour, poetry and great physical ingenuity, DON GNU explores the forces that shape us as human beings – from community and competition to longing, control, desire and change.

DON GNU is one of Denmark’s busiest touring performing arts companies and, over the past 15 years, has presented its performances across much of the world – from the Nordic region and Europe to Canada, South Korea, India, Cyprus and Cuba.

Today, DON GNU continues to develop performances where the spectacular meets the vulnerable, and where raw energy, humour, poetry and human complexity exist side by side.

Website: dongnu.dk