Hyperion - Higher States, Part 2

Longing for a perfect world, Hölderlin’s early romantic figure of Hyperion oscillates between manic-depressive and hallucinatory, euphoric states. His attempts to unite art, nature, love and revolution in harmony fail. Exhausted, Hyperion withdraws to a Greek island, where he devotes himself to writing letters. Ensemble Modern, Kiriakos Hadjiioannou and Fabrice Mazliah explore these attitudes, creating a dance and music performance in letter sequencies, a distorted adaptation of the novel which transforms the isolation of the hermit’s existence, his flights of intellect and lust and his clinging to hope after defeat into movement and sound.