Issue link: https://maltatoday.uberflip.com/i/1044434
16 maltatoday | SUNDAY • 28 OCTOBER 2018 CULTURE A voyage into space ZFINMALTA'S upcoming production, Voyager, is the brainchild of Paolo Mangiola, the national dance company's artistic director. Armed with a three-year contract, Mangiola is beginning to leave his mark at ZfinMalta, pioneering fresh thinking about contemporary dance on our shores. Although he has already per- formed during the Valletta 2018 festivities, this produc- tion will be the full debut for Mangiola in his capacity as ar- tistic director. Mangiola is a choreographer, dance educator and performer working within ballet and con- temporary dance practices. This production, a joint col- laboration between Mangiola and Maltese-born visual artist Austin Camilleri, is inspired by NASA's mission into space in 1977 when the Golden Record, a gold-plated time capsule was launched on the Voyager spacecraft to communicate the human story to extraterrestri- als. This 60-minute brand new production questions how our past, present and future hopes might be represented now. The sounds from Earth got Mangiola pondering on what type of sounds and historical images we would send to outer space if a new Voyager mission was to be launched in the near future. The audience would get the drift of Mangiola's thinking through the dance routines they will be witnessing dur- ing the performance, which should open up a lot of ques- tions about who we are and what we are up to. Mangiola says that once we immerse ourselves into the production, it will make us re- alise how we treat this planet, what we take care of and what we neglect. The performance follows two parts; the first is the launch of Voyager and the second part is the kind of message and sound we will pass today if we were to send another Golden Record to space. Mangiola has been fascinat- ed by space from an early age and always wanted this chal- lenge to express his thoughts and appreciation of the solar system through dance chore- ography, while he continued to question himself – if dance would have been recorded and sent out to space to communi- cate something about what we represent… would dance be a good medium? Meanwhile, the twin Voyager 1 and Voyager 2 spacecrafts are exploring where no one and nothing from Earth has flown before. Continuing on their more-than-39-year jour- ney since their 1977 launches, they both are much farther away from Earth and the sun than Pluto. The primary mission was the exploration of Jupiter and Saturn. After making a string of discoveries there - such as active volcanoes on Jupiter's moon and intricacies of Sat- urn's rings - the mission was extended. The adventurers' current mission, the Voyager Inter- stellar Mission (VIM), will be exploring the outermost edge of the sun's domain... and be- yond. Who knows, this might in- spire Mangiola for a sequel production in the future. Voyager is being staged on November 2, 3 and 4 at 8pm at the Manoel Theatre. You can book your tickets for this much-awaited performance through the Manoel Thea- tre website: https://www.te- atrumanoel.com.mt/default. asp?m=shows&id=765.