MASKS:
A WOLF IN SHEEP'S CLOTHING
MUSICAL VISUAL PERFORMANCE
The most influential emotions are not the ones we feel.
They are the ones we fail to recognise.
Wolf in Sheep’s Clothing is a musical visual performance by five women who explore the complexity of emotional experience through the mask, the body, music and voice. The performance emerges at the intersection of theatre, contemporary dance, visual art and music.
Emotion in the performance is not a fixed state of the individual, but something that emerges through relationships with oneself, with others, with space and with other emotions. The performance creates a sensory space in which emotions are revealed through their relationships and tensions. Fear touches dependence. Loneliness encounters the need for closeness. Anxiety seeks control. The fear of rejection shapes the way we enter into relationships with others.
The mask is not a means of hiding, but a means of revealing. It is a transitional tool through which inner states can take on an image and become perceptible. What is usually invisible or difficult to put into words can emerge through the mask, image, movement, sound, rhythm, voice or physical presence. In different ways, inner states thus become something that can be perceived.
The performance features the members of Orchestre Jigeen Ñi from Dakar. Their live music is not an accompaniment to the performance, but an active part of it, a space in which emotions move, intensify, break apart and come together again.
Wolf in Sheep’s Clothing is not a story about good and bad, or about wolves and sheep. It is an image of inner contradiction. What if the wolf does not know that it is a wolf? What if it did not disguise itself in order to deceive anyone, but in order to survive among others?
The performance creates a space in which, for a moment, we can remain with something we do not yet understand, and perhaps precisely because of this, see it for the first time.
Concept and direction: Inti Šraj
Creators and performers: Orchestre Jigeen Ñi
Khady Dieng: keyboard player / performer
Evora Vaz: bass player / performer
Ndeye Cissé: percussionist / performer
Amina Sarr: singer / performer
Aissatou Dieng: drummer / performer
Music production: Jure Vlahovič
Costume design: Ixone Ormaeche Gabilondo in collaboration with apprentices from Centre de
Formation Professionnelle de Ouakam
Lighting design: Borut Bučinel
Producer: Nataša Zavolovšek
Production: Exodos Ljubljana
Co production: Druga Godba Ljubljana Festival
Partners:
Grande Théâtre National de Dakar
MCU Dakar
Kuga Studio
Lutkovno gledališče LjubljanaKUD Qulenium
Trainstation Subart Kranj
Vodnikova domačija Šiška
Orchestre Jigeen Ñi
Orchestre Jigeen Ñi is an all female musical ensemble from Dakar, made up of professional women musicians and singers. The name Jigeen Ñi means “women” in Wolof. The group creates a space in which women musicians can independently develop their artistic practice and take a visible place on the music scene, while at the same time opening possibilities for
other women entering the world of music.
The mission of Jigeen Ñi extends beyond music. The group understands music as a space for social dialogue and as a means of promoting social awareness, gender equality and active citizenship. Their work is grounded in the values of hope, respect, solidarity, peace and love.
As part of the project MASKS: Wolf in Sheep’s Clothing, the members of Orchestre Jigeen Ñi contribute not only to the music and performance, but also to the creation of the masks they use on stage. Throughout the process, they move between different authorial and performing roles.
This movement between roles is an important value of their collaboration. When the same content is expressed through different artistic languages, the artist must repeatedly return to its source. In this way, an experience or emotion can become less bound to a particular form of expression and emerge as something more direct, clear and universal.
This connects with one of the fundamental ideas of the MASKS project: to search for human experience beyond social and historical frameworks and, through different forms of expression, to discover what is shared by human beings regardless of their cultural environment.
