Tianzhuo Chen created an overwhelming stage piece in ISHVARA that no opera, not even a drug rush, will match any time soon: music, dance, bodies and images meld into visual/acoustic ecstasy. Inspired by the Hindu epos Bhagavad Gita, the stage characters push themselves in various versions of divinity – and use the big stage for their carnevalesque rivalry, whereby reality and fantasy seem to become blurred. Chen helps himself to religious symbols and dance styles such as Butoh or voguing and combines them with subcultural codes from drag, club and pop culture… (Tianzhuo Chen, Beio)
