Project

Jette Loona Hermanis, Anna Ansone

FrostBite

Performance concept, scenography, costumes and choreography:
Jette Loona Hermanis and Anna Ansone
Performers:
Jette Loona Hermanis, Anna Ansone, Krišjānis Elviks
Polyclay objects and poster:
Sofija Frančeska Putniņa
Prosthetics:
Martina Gofman
Soundscape mixing:
Jette Loona Hermanis
Special credits to:
Matiss Rucko, Kristians Aglonietis
Support:
Ministry of Culture, Culture Endowment of Estonia

FrostBite is a performative act on infantile games, nurture and role-play within an aestheticised universe, where naivete is an advantage. Portraying empathy-induced characters that shift between juvenile and mature roles. A performance is situated in a frame under the logic of the “house” game.

Three performers (+ a root) that seem to seek thrill by varying between embodying different stages of human development: The Infant, The Child, The Adolescent, The Adult.

These stages are signified with symbolic skin scarrings that each performer possesses;
The God’s Eye - Creator energy - The Infant
The Teardrop- The gift of consciousness - The Child
The Spiral - The disruptive energy signifying the process - The Adolescent
The Doughnut - The end product, shape in its final form - The Adult

They are bound to stage numerous circumstances that revolve around parenting the object of care, which fluctuates between the performers, and a bizarrely deformed river root, that they have chosen to supervise as their own child. The dynamic between the performers constantly morphs into new dimensions, as they find themselves restless in needing to fantasize new realities to navigate. A score that can function only through utterly committing to the delusion.

Jette Loona Hermanis pulsing Baltic blood, is a performance artist, choreographer, and performer, born in 1997. After finishing her studies in SNDO Choreography in Amsterdam, she has since been based in Tallinn and Riga. She received the Estonian Theatre Prize Dance Award 2022 with Johhan Rosenberg for their work “Eden Detail”. Her work often animates the body through a digital veil.

Anna Ansone is a visual artist having graduated Latvian Art Academy in the Stage Design department. She is based and presents herself in Riga. Her working background lies in costume and set design for video works and stage. Her artform is influenced from a place where borderline tendencies develop into a sacral uniform.

Krišjānis Elviks is a scenographer and interdisciplinary artist based in Riga, Latvia. His work combines such media as scenography, video, installation, performance and text. In the center of his artistic practice is “thinking in space”, which results in audio-visual exhibitions and performances.

Sofija Frančeska Putniņa aka persefon is a Latvian multi-media artist who mainly focuses on sculpting and art direction, exploring sensitivity in the grotesque and fantastical, otherworldly subjects.

Martina Gofman is an illustrator working in the field of graphic design and makeup. In the latter, the main focus is prosthetic and theatrical makeup for creating unworldly characters with modified bodies.