Maria Kong: Open Source – A Fete of Light, Sound, and Visuals

We often post about visual arts: our favorite artists and movements, street art, etc, and thought it’s about time that we write about performance arts. We had the great privilege of attending Open Source, a performance by dance company Maria Kong which can be summed up in one word: WOW!

The performance explores the deepest desires, hidden thoughts and forbidden longings of a bride on her wedding night, in a single moment of reflection before she gives herself entirely to her man and commits to marriage.

True to life and love, Open Source depicts the heroine’s most passionate, animalistic, primal desires and her inner conflicts whether she should succumb to them or keep them locked up inside of her.

This sexy performance has all kinds of fun surprises: two women fighting over a man, girl on girl action, guy on guy action, and of course the good old man and woman love and sex and magic.

Pulling the strings of the heroine’s fantasies is a character we like to call “the architect”, a sort of puppeteer pulling her farther and farther down the rabbit hole. The architect oversees the whole development of events, giving life and taking away characters’ hearts. This brings up intriguing questions of life and love.

The casting for the show was perfection: Brazilian bombshell Luciane Castro Fontanella was perfect for the role of the blushing bride’s sexy alter ego. She gave such an amazing performance that it was literally hard to take our eyes off of her.

French dancer Caroline Boussard was perfect for the role of the bride: fragile, delicate and romantic.
Brazilian dancer Anderson Andre Braz as the groom: strong and sexy.
Israeli dancer Artour Astman as another puppet in this game of desires.
and Israeli dancer Ori Ben-Shabat as the skeleton-glove-wearing powerful and creepy “architect”.

We don’t want to give away the ending but let’s just say it was perfect and human at the same time. It was a very strong statement on why us humans would give up the exciting whirlwind of debauchery and primal desire for a crazy little thing called love.

Modern dance performances are often criticized for being so open-ended, some might even say vague. While they are considered a form of abstract art, they aim to tell a story and at times it seems they are so abstract that the story gets lost in translation.

This was definitely not the case in Open Source. With the help of dramatic lighting and genius sound effects (at times drums beats likening the sound of the characters’ heartbeat and at times romantic Spanish guitar) by Rodgers and Hammerstein and squarepusher, the performance was right on point. It was exciting, emotional and moving.

The performance took place at Tel Aviv’s Suzanne Dellal center for performing arts in Neve Tzedek neighborhood, a beauty in its own right.
This place is very dear to us as it was the location of one of our first photoshoots for the blog!

Rony wore a patterned vintage button down shirt, patterned skort, purple asymmetrical clutch, wood and gold necklace by Noritamy, and stone adorned peep toe heels from Prague.

We highly recommend going to see the show, this is something you don’t want to miss!
Tickets and more information about the show here.
More about Maria Kong here.

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