In today's world, we are unlikely to find a modern human being who has never been burned out in his or her life. Such snowmen simply do not exist anymore. After all, we live on a planet that, over the last few decades, has learned to rotate around its axis, disregarding the laws of physics. Knowledge here is aging faster than one can possibly read it, while being in a hurry at every step we take it not only as a natural status, but also as a trendy sensation. Surrounded by virtual reality, we live in times of constant competition and seek for statuses. It’s getting easier and easier to get lost in variety of identities and responsibilities that we ourselves created. It is getting easier and easier to burn out.

 

Inspired by such contemporary modus vivendi and their own burnouts, dancers and founders of dance company NUEPIKO Marius Paplauskas, Marius Pinigis and Andrius Stakele in their dance performance “Overheat” explore the phenomena of the so-called overheat. The tandem of three dancers has already earned recognition among dance lovers as the heroes of dance performance “(g)round zero”. However, this time, the energetic trio is about to demonstrate entirely different body language and invite viewers to contemplate on far more global questions: “Sometimes I feel burned out. What is more, a kind of burnout is taking place at a more global political and ecological scale. Humanity is very ill.” – says Marius Pinigis, one of the authors of the dance performance.

 

However, the purpose of the performance is not to moralize, but rather to encourage people to ask themselves meaningful questions: “Though, the theme of the performance is broad and increasingly global, we do not seek to moralize. Instead, we try to concentrate on ourselves and to ask ourselves the question: “where do I burn myself?” By constantly confronting ourselves with this question, we keep uncovering creative possibilities to interpret the phenomena of overheat through movement. Also, it has a high impact on our daily lives, habits, behaviours, values, work ethics, relationship, both, on personal and team levels. So, our new performance is, more likely, a self-reflection, which hopefully will become a tool for us – performers and the audience – to rethink the phenomena of overheat more consciously.” Therefore, it is a dance performance for anyone who has ever been burned out or is unable to remain indifferent to the fires of the environment.