Stand of the Sun: A summer ritual for the melting metropolis
As the Sun begins to set on this summer night, we invite you for an evening performance where environmental history meets the wonder of celestial interconnectedness.
Integrating choreography inspired by Western and Caribbean flow with harmonic invocations inspired by nature, Stand of the Sun offers a new ritual amid climate chaos.
This will be the first live performance of creative responses to Melting Metropolis, a University of Liverpool research project exploring the history of urban heat islands and the lived experience of their residents in London, New York, Paris and Port of Spain, Trinidad. Melting Metropolis is funded by a Wellcome Discovery Award and runs at the University of Liverpool and Queens College, City University of New York, until 2029.
Stand of the Sun invites us to observe our cities through the solar gaze, exploring the deeply uncanny and uncertain nature of our celestial relationship today. It imagines what our closest star would say to humanity if only we could listen. How does the Sun experience our over-heating world? What does it feel like to move through our too-hot cities and heat-stroked bodies? Can we empathise with an entity so utterly different to us, yet intertwined with our fate?
Travelling from outer space into the melting metropolis, stories from the hot heart of our solar system will guide us through the evening.
Director: Bryony Ella
Producer: Joanna Penso
Composer: Bumi Thomas
Choreographer: Antoine Marc
Lighting design: Rachel Sampley
Stand of the Sun is in conversation with Bryony Ella’s sculpture My Body is a Sundial. It is part of the Richmond Arts and Ideas Festival and the Cultural Reforesting exhibition events programme at Orleans House Gallery. The sculpture and this event are inspired by the environmental research of Melting Metropolis.
About Melting Metropolis
Melting Metropolis is a five-year environmental history research project. It is funded by a Wellcome Discovery Award and runs at the University of Liverpool and Queens College, City University of New York, until 2029.
About Cultural Reforesting at Orleans House Gallery
Cultural Reforesting is an artist-led research programme initiated by Richmond Arts Service, responding to the ecological crisis. The programme commissions artists to respond to the big question: How can we renew our relationship with nature?
