SAYONAKIDORI

Name: SAYONAKIDORI
Start: 2026-05-24T15:00:00+00:00
End: 2026-05-24T16:00:00+00:00

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MMLAB Theatre

At the Pranas Domšaitis Gallery (Liepų St. 33, Klaipėda)
1:00 (without intermission)

Premiere 2025

Musical performance

Author, Director and Composer Agnė Matulevičiūtė
Producer Rusnė Kregždaitė
Set Designer and Light Designer Julius Kuršis
Costume Designer Elena Marija Veleckaitė
Choreographer Pawel Sakowicz

Performers: Tomoo Nagai (Japan), Clara Giambino (France), Greta Grinevičiūtė, Ugnė Kavaliauskaitė, Justina Mykolaitytė, Laurynas Jurgelis, Gediminas Rimeika, Alvydė Pikturnaitė, Agnė Matulevičiūtė

The performance includes Strobe lights and smoke

Performance in English (Lithuanian librettos will be provided before the performance)

uka-uka: the sound of always being slightly wrong, or not careful, irresponsible, ungrounded. Nightingale Corridors helps you to be prepared, not uka-uka

uwaa: the sound of a feeling that cannot be expressed in words, or something unexplainable

Mushi mushi: the sound of insects being forced from your body, laughing while vocalizing an unthinkable situation, or being steamed alive. Also, very humid.

boro-boro: the sound when everything around you fades away*

* Onomatopoeia from Polly Barton’s book “Fifty sounds”

Sayonakidori (from Japanese, meaning “Nightingale”) is a landscape of onomatopoeia, showing how Japanese onomatopoeia (the equivalent of objects or phenomena in sound) allow sounds to be conveyed in words.

During her visits to Japan, the composer and director Agnė Matulevičiūtė visited Nijō Castle to learn about the architecture of this unique structure and its floors, which produce sounds similar to the voices of birds. The “nightingale floor” is a myth, possibly a security system to defend against intruders or simply an unintentional architectural mistake. The artist is interested in the fact that this myth continues to be recorded and retold. This duality opens up particularly broad and interesting contexts and themes for performance creation. Walking on “the Floor of the Nightingale” inspired the artist to create a work for the building, treating it like a musical instrument, playing with what is not seen but only heard, and vice versa. It is a work that combines music and dance, where the performers themselves shape the sonic fabric, using their bodies and voices.

The themes of the musical performance come from the observation of Japanese culture from a distance and its interpretation through the eyes of a European: safety, fear of the other, traces of ghost culture, and explorations of the phenomenon of the uncomfortable. The sound technology of the Nightingale Corridor used for security inspires themes of attack, defence and privacy. Here, security is both an inner state and a fear of the insecurity of the world.

About The Director

Agnė Matulevičiūtė is a sound artist and composer, with a particular focus on music for theatre and film. Media and interdisciplinary art contexts, musical performances and experiments based on sonic expression constitute her field of activity. She holds an artistic PhD degree from the Lithuanian Academy of Music and Theatre, where she researched and developed the concept of “after-sound” in contemporary music.

Since 2014, she has been actively participating in group exhibitions, art and contemporary music festivals, and artists’ residencies in Lithuania and abroad. Her music written for the cinema has received a national award. She has also composed music for more than 30 productions in major Lithuanian theatres (twice nominated for national theatre awards). Her works were presented not only in Lithuania but also in Austria, the Czech Republic, Germany, Latvia, Estonia, Japan, and Pakistan.

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