Flax, baby! Flax! [interludes/variations]

<sup><sub>Opera-performance at
A Tale of a Tub, Rotterdam – August 2024
and Zone2Source, Amsterdam – September 2024

Libretto by Liza Prins and Marie Ilse Bourlanges, informed by workshops series hosted at A Tale of A Tub throughout 2024, with among others:Adina Orboi, Marjolein van der Loo, Janna van Welsem, Samar Nasrullah Khan, Jessie Bullivant, Hannah Kirkham, Katie Pollard, Isabelle Sully, Lisanne Janssen, Julija Mockute, Renata Mirón, and kids from the neighbourhood.
Musical compositions by Bergur Anderson and Liza Prins.
Performed with Bergur Anderson, Joana Guiné, Logan Hon Mua, Robin Becker, Romy Day Winkel, Giulia Damiani, Bitna Youn, Miriam van Rijsingen, Pilar Mata Dupont, Berenike Melchior, Liza Prins, and Marie Ilse Bourlanges.</sub></sup>

Flax, baby! Flax! is an experimental operatic performance articulated around the labour-intensive process of working flax into linen. Professional and non-professional dancers and singers came together using sculptural ‘flax-tools-turned-into-instruments,’ while singing of bygone and contemporary work struggles, desires and natural resources, capitalist infrastructures and protest, political agency and love, while aiming for cross-historical solidarity. Flax, baby! Flax! is structured in four acts, relaying the proces from flax stem to textile fibers—rippling, breaking, scutching, and heckling—consisting of nine songs and a clog dance. 

_{^{Photography by Kyle Tryhorn
Video by Yana Khazanovich
Sound by Albert Rask}}