Ela Orleans: Cryptic presents Night Voyager by Ela Orleans
Cryptic presents Night Voyager by Ela Orleans
Electronic sound and visual artist, Ela Orleans tours her audiovisual performance Night Voyager to Musica Utopia, Perth Theatre and Concert Hall, National Concert Hall Dublin, SARC, Moving on Music Belfast and Kings Place London in Spring 2024.
Set to soaring music that recalls classic science-fiction movie soundtracks and sees the artist perform live on synthesiser, theremin and violin, footage of the 1969 Apollo moon mission is repurposed to retell the narrative of Night Thoughts, a nine-poem cycle written by Edward Young in the 1740s. Orleans’ Night Voyager marries visuals from the NASA archives capturing fearful but optimistic astronauts and their anxious loved ones left at home with Young’s meditation on death – and speaks, too, of the possibility of cultural forgetting, as in Young’s poem, now scarcely remembered but called in its time ‘the grandest and richest poetry that human genius has ever produced’.
“Rather than a linear retelling, Orleans’s show focuses on the astronauts’ emotional journey and the wider meaning of the lunar trip.” The National
Composer, director & performer: Ela Orleans
Director & producer: Stuart MacLean
Archive Producer & NASA archive: Stephen Slater
Executive Producer: Guy Maddin
Cryptic
Established in 1994, Cryptic is Scotland’s internationally renowned home of audiovisual performances and experimentation. Based in Glasgow but with a global reach, Cryptic presents and promotes the most dynamic talents of today and tomorrow as they explore new dimensions in live music, visual and sonic arts and performance, transforming existing spaces, dazzling the senses, stimulating thought and provoking conversation.”