Dream journey for the soul
World premiere
Premiere
with Lex van Someren & Friends 2001
Premiere of the mystical concert & light show
Those who know Lex van Someren from his concert and clown performances know about the qualities of his mystical music that goes to the heart, his warm voice that takes us through ups and downs, his humor and lightness as a clown, his charisma.
However, many do not know him as one who has long stage experience in other countries, who had a television series in Norway as a clown, and who for a long time carried a vision that has now entered the phase of realization.
His path as a mystic led him into the spiritual dimensions of dance, music and sounds. In his music, sonic and rhythmic elements from many eras and cultures flow together. In his songs he usually does not use lyrics in the usual sense, but uses a melodic sequence of syllables, which he calls his soul language. His music and singing touch deeply, awaken power and harmony, remind us of the essential.
Zu Beginn weißt...
...der Clown den Weg
All his performances in churches and concert halls were preparation, sometimes waiting, to realize the great vision of performing a multi-dimensional sacred stage art with many professional artists in the great concert halls.
He succeeded in this quantum leap with the support of Brigitte Hamm and all the contributors with the first performance in the Kurhaus Baden-Baden on December 30, 2001 in the fully occupied concert hall in front of more than 1,100 people. The show was enthusiastically received and rewarded with standing ovations.
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A big step had been taken to bring together many like-minded professional artists, to transform the concert hall into a consecrated space and to open the hearts of the visitors through a high-quality, professional and dreamlike performance.
Music and light art. Lex van Someren sings
in the light art play by Alfred Wolski
"The soul is the seed of the core of my being. In it lie all the hereditary factors, my whole potential and in it my development is depicted as a dream. Every soul has its dream and that includes wanting to live its whole potential. The "Dream Journey for the Soul" is the vision, the dream of the soul of Lex van Someren connected with the dreams of the other participating artists. They all manifest their dreams in this show. The artists are connected to each other on the soul level and live their dream. In this revelation of the soul on stage, at the same time the soul spaces are also addressed for the audience and they can resonate with the lived potential of the artists and with their own dreams, their own potentials.
Hence the bursts of creativity that so many audience members have felt during and through "Dream Journey of the Soul," as they are brought into contact with their own core of being." - Sara Olivier
By the way: A very special stage design was developed with a projection surface extending over the entire stage. Years of experimentation by K.F. Heisterkamp and Alfred Wolski, in collaboration with Lex van Someren and other artists, have resulted in a novel form of light and image projection that transforms the stage into a dreamlike, visionary space.
What is the "Dream Journey for the Soul"?
It is a total work of art consisting of dance, singing, music, painting, clowning, moving stage design, lighting design. I speak deliberately of Gesamtkunstwerk. Because through the harmonious interaction of the artists, complex dream images were created that appeal to all the senses and thereby create a completely new artistic and spiritual space that is able to lead visitors on an inner journey. Meditation, joy, hope, lightness, creativity, opening of the heart, soul food, laughter, beautiful dreamy image, dance and sound associations, staging of archetypal soul images - all this happened over 3 hours and was always exciting, touching and full of harmony. It was an experience that lingered for weeks.
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Lex van Someren writes in his book "Multi-Dimensional Sacred Art":
"I want to see performances that bring each of us into our own story, deep into our being (a new mythology), so that each of us can have our own transformational, transcendental, or spiritual experiences," and "it is the technical skill of the artist which -when taken in the service of the highest soul attunement- gives birth to the magical moment for the manifestation of a true work of art in the physical. The work of art then becomes a transparent vehicle for the listeners, which makes them still in awe and wonder, transporting them instantly to the subtler dimensions of being - to the space where the soul is at home, so to speak.... This is what leaves us speechless, uplifts our feeling or makes us cry because of its effect as a channel for powerful vibrations of love and light."
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This can be accomplished by a clown with humor and wit as well as music, pictures, light shows, devoted singing and dancing ...
Sara Olivier (Stage design: K.F.Heisterkamp)
Scenes from the "Dream Journey
Birth and awakening of the earth
It is always amazing how the clown Lex van Someren opens the hearts with his humor at the beginning of the event - and before you know it, you are amazed in the first scene, the birth of the earth, which also symbolically stands for every new birth of us (music: "Human Symphony" by Frank Steiner). After the divine birth impulse, the music begins in heart rhythm and increases more and more until the wonderful earth appears and its awakening is danced by Ana Kersevan in the mists of the primordial beginnings, then in front of the rose, the grail of love that the angels worship (image: Judit Hildebrandt). Then the earth is awakened. And this new aspect (with beautiful handover from one dancer to another) Sara Olivier dances as the "peacock feather dance" of joy, of childlikeness, the dance of the elements, of the devas, of the feminine power and beauty of nature, speaks of love and self-love, of devotion.
As a counterpoint and balance to this, the deep warm voice of Lex as a masculine chant of loving strength, of gentle protection and power. All these soul qualities are enlivened by the music, the singers, the dancers, so tangibly manifested and experienced by the spectator (music: Northern Sky by Lex van Someren).
Birth of the Earth...
...as our own birth
Awaken and Receive (Ana Kersevan)
Journey to the Primordial Grounds: Reconciliation of opposites
All these images carry me - whether it is a Tai Chi dance in which gestures of creation are celebrated with inner power; or when a wonderfully colorful and sensitive trumpet solo (Frank Steiner) converses with Lex van Someren's voice and a new sound space is created by a play of light, that one believes to sense the primordial source of the sounds; or when organ music with shamanic music, singing and rhythmic drumming resounds in a Gothic cathedral, the entire front of which is occupied by a giant archangel (Lex van Someren, Stephanie M'Aria and Renate Rothaler), then the belly of the earth opens up and the power can finally penetrate upwards and connect with the sky, which has been kept down for so long by church walls. Spiritual traditions are reconciled in a powerful and strength-giving way. At this, the voices of Lex van Someren and Stephanie M'Aria resound from their very own shamanic depths, and this power echoes in me, in the stones of the cathedral, making them dance. A tremendously suspenseful scene and musically brilliant.
Music, singing and crystal sounds
Then crystal singing bowls (played by Janice Williams in a masterly way) united with the crystal clear soprano voice of Uschi Klee and the deep voice of Lex carry you away into a temple of confidence and healing.
The wonderful female voices of Uschi Klee, Annette Reich, Sara Olivier enchant, weave light spheres, crystal clear sounds in the space, the musicians Frank Steiner (trumpet, keyboards), Vache Bagratuni (cello) and Juan Miguel Moreno (guitar) bring life and fullness to the music.
The music is the supporting element of the whole show, it is so strong, so expressive and soulful that all scenes, all images seem to spring from it and yet every dance, every image brings a new quality into it, explores the possibilities of the music.
The shadow dance
Or: The shadow dance (Anuradha Dasi) with the music "Sri Ram, Jai Ram" (sung devotedly by Uschi Klee, Annette Reich, Sara Olivier and Lex van Someren), a music that increases more and more until the essence is revealed: During the enchantingly graceful shadow dance (on yellow-glowing round disc), the stage is bathed in a play of light, starlight and crystals flow from the heart of the dancer and return there again, as if to the center of the universe. The music and the pulsating starlights become more and more intense until the yellow light goes out and the disc becomes a mirror, in the center of which the starlights dip and emerge again. Finally, the climax is reached, the mirror disappears, and only a spinning luminous and glittering crystal ball is visible, illuminating and enlivening the vast universe with its starlight dance. This heart crystal ball we have always been and from this we have drawn in all our outer forms of life dance (light design: Alfred Wolski). One of the most perfect enchanting scenes, in which music, song, image, movement and light mutually reinforce and perfect each other.
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Shamanic worlds
Kailash's performance at night under the moon star (picture: Ursina Würmli) immediately transports me to the wilderness and vastness of sacred nature, Mother Earth, our source of power. Music and image create a shamanic atmosphere, the instruments come alive. Here one feels the ancestors, the power animals, the sublimity, from the didgeridoo and the Indian flute flow the primordial ways that Kailash can play in such a soulful way - then the stage sets change and I suddenly feel transported to the beginnings of the world, light and shadow wrestle with each other, I feel the breath of the great spirit through the drums and rattles, through the didgeridoo, through the sound of the voices sung by Kailash, then later by Lex van Someren and Stephanie M'Aria. The feminine aspect of the shamanic brings another dimension and depth to what is happening, expands the space of experience, and sounds in my abdomen, finds resonance throughout my body - and I look into the vastness of my inner spaces.
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The many aspects and experiences of this performance cannot even be described. The music (by Lex van Someren, Kailash, Frank Steiner, Patrick Bernard, and others) and the stage action cross-fertilize each other and climb to the highest heights of experience, bringing the essence of the music into this world. It is rather the images and the inner experience that can be grasped in words, while the music and often the pure soul language of the singing, the atmosphere belong to the indescribable of the performance.
Scenery and stage design
Delicate watercolor angel paintings on the stage (Ursina Würmli) let us sense the closeness of these beings, as if only a thin veil lay between us and them, let us feel their vibration up close.
The music vibrates and dances with fine tones.
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The angel pictures of Judit Hildebrandt focus through their forms special (ore) angel energies. In the paintings and dances to Tara and Krishna (dance: Anuradha Dasi) the energies of goodness, mercy (Tara) and beauty, joy and love (Krishna) are celebrated. In the Gothic cathedral, heaven and earth are connected by powerful angelic beings, while organ, drum and shamanic chanting invoke the great connection of above and below.
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Then: The many crystal light pictures by K.F. Heisterkamp and the light plays by Alfred Wolski create melodies of light and color, worlds in which music and stage action are enchanted.
Sacred art as an experience of the soul
The "dream journey" walks on the paths of the ancestors, the shamans, the Aborigines, who in their art represent the connection to the divine in a primal and creative way. Art also had a similar background in ancient Greece, where the maturation of the soul as a healing process was the starting point of creation. Also in all classical art, the artist opens himself to a transcendent process in order to create a space for inspiration, spiritual energy and beauty through his skill.
In the "dream journey" the artists create for all a free space for soul experiences and transformations. In the archetypal images already lies the transformation, the development, the maturation, the beauty and perfection as if enclosed in a seed. These are constantly recreated on stage in changing forms, thereby making the event a powerful inner experience.
"Dream journey - that is for me the transcending of the mundane, the crossing of the Styx (the river from Greek mythology that separates us from the world of the invisible) to enter into reality, the wholeness of the world, when the view becomes free for the soul and spiritual realms and one's own essence can be experienced. Here we feel where creativity and spontaneity spring from, we discover the spaces from which sound, color and movement emerge, merge into each other, represent different vibrational frequencies. Here we experience our connection to the flow of life, the great mystery, the divine within us. Here we become aware of our greatness as we connect with our soul aspects of inner growth, love for the earth, angelic energies, mercy, beauty and love, childlikeness and joy. Everyone can experience this in their own way, because the world of images, dance and music of the "Dream Journey for the Soul" is open and offers a variety of possibilities for perception and experience.
As a viewer, I felt this multidimensional space with all my senses, felt into every sound, into every movement, and experienced a deep inner experience through this production and at the same time a creative impulse for my own life."
Text: Laurenz Hildebrandt