Galactic Crush 2:
Into the Cold
Stephanie Kayal and Abed Kobeissy

Galactic Crush 2: Into the Cold is the second part of the Galactic Crush saga whose part 1 was premiered in 2022. In classic literature, a saga is a series of stories of heroic quests. This saga flirts with the notion of fiction, at a time and place where an absurd reality has deprived fiction of its power of imagination. “In a way, this project is our own apology to fiction”, stated Stephanie Kayal.

If Galactic Crush: part 1 was a response to the event that took place in Beirut in 2021-22, Galactic Crush 2: Into the Cold was imagined as a sequel performance in which the same two protagonists, the antihero and her sidekick, decide to make use of scientific advancement, and build a Do-It-Yourself intergalactic spaceship to seek life in another galaxy, in search of renewed fame and glory. With a shy and dark humour, they sail into the cold, and dance as a reminder of home.

Amid a genocidal present and an uncertain future, Stephanie Kayal and Abed Kobeissy revisit their failed crime-fighting power couple. Confronting their protagonists with a harsh gaze, Kayal and Kobeissy question the ethics of imagining a creation process at a time when an entire population is being annihilated for holding on to their homeland.

Using dance, live music, video and text, they wield dark humour as both a shield and a tool for survival. Marooned in the cold darkness of space, the two protagonists of Galactic Crush II: Into the Cold await their fate.

Nothing can go through all of this and remain unchanged. We needed to allow our work to react to our new reality, as witnesses to a genocide, and survivors of a war. This performance shares the work’s dramaturgical metamorphosis with the audience. Using dance, text, live music, and video to construct a Sci-Fi matrix of elements, the work also acknowledges the fragility of these two fleeting souls aboard the spaceship. Navigating between dance performance, lecture-performance, and live concert, the piece blurs the lines between what is fiction and what is real.

Like us, this performance is now a forever changing version of itself. It acknowledges the doubts that accompanied the creation process and shares with the audience an excruciating metamorphosis. How can we re-shape what was initially envisioned as a piece for the stage? How can we confront loss and vulnerability without succumbing to numbness? How to wield our fatigue and rage?”

Stephanie Kayal

Artistic team
Concept, text, and performance: Stephanie Kayal and Abed Kobeissy
Choreography: Stephanie Kayal
Original music: Abed Kobeissy
Set, ight design and performance: Pôl Seif
Dramaturgical advice: Sabine Cmelniski, Krystel Khoury

Produced by: 
Hiros

Co-production: 
Théâtre National Wallonie-Bruxelles and Alkantara, as part of Common Stories, a Creative Europe programme funded by the European Union
Théâtre de la Vie, Brussels 
Kunstencentrum Buda, Kortrijk  
Parallèle – Pratiques artistiques émergentes internationales, Marseille

With the support of: Ettijahat – Independent Culture, workspacebrussels, ISAC – Institut Supérieur des Arts et des Chorégraphies ArBa-EsA, Studio Le Labeur — Dame de Pic / Cie Karine Ponties.

This project is part of the Cycle de professionnalisation pour une durabilité du secteur culturel – volet Jeunes chorégraphes du Sud- led by Parallèle, with the support of the Cultures et création programme of the Fondation de France and the patronage of the Caisse des dépôts.