strike

What is it about Carmen that means she is brutally murdered, time and time again, in every performance of the world-famous opera? And what does it say about us that we keep watching? In the brand-new production 'strike' international collective Moved by the Motion exposes the violence embedded in the beauty of this legend.

A "strike" can take many forms: a sudden blow, a percussive hit, a refusal, an act of collective interruption. The word carries violence, rhythm, and dissent all at once. What these gestures have in common is their evasion of capture even as they brush against the traditions of the world’s most famous femicide: the myth of Carmen. What can still be said about Carmen that has not already been sung, filmed, or choreographed?  

strike begins precisely at this point of exhaustion, following the endless repetition of Carmen's life and ultimately her death. Across centuries of adaptation she has been fetishized, moralized, romanticized, and punished. Yet she continues to return, or rather be resurrected - summoned by our desire and projections.

Carmen is at once familiar and controversial: a beloved cliché, a femme fatale, “the devil” according to her jealous lover, a rebellious bird that refuses to be caged. Why is she so seductive and yet so threatening? Why does the femicide of an independent Roma woman fill so many opera houses and auditoria, even today?  

“She has been idolised for the last century and a half, and yet she still keeps dying. What is it about her that is so fascinating and seductive for a world that continues to commit violence against so many different types of people?” --- Tosh Basco 

For the makers of strike, Carmen is not a “wild woman lacking the sweet restraint of her sex” – as she was described by a critic of The New York Times in 1878 –, but an elusive and inspiring figure: a multifaceted lens through which to view the socio-ecological crises of our time, including the ubiquity of violence against minority groups. Simultaneously, strike is a reflection of the violence inherent to genres like opera, cinema and institutional theatre. The production extracts itself by using improvisation as a basis and making drama, film, live flamenco, dance and performance collide on stage. 

strike, directed by Wu Tsang, is the culmination of six years of research into the opera Carmen, the representation of Carmen in other genres, and the flamenco subculture. Besides Tsang, the cast of strike consists of dancers / choreographers Tosh Basco and Josh Johnson, actor Perle Palombo, flamenco artists Raúl Cantizano and Sara Jiménez, and saxophonist Tapiwa Svosve. 

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Moved by the Motion is a multidisciplinary group of artists who play with language, movement, image and sound. They create at the melting point of film, poetry, music, dance, performance and theatre. The group started in LA in 2013 and is internationally renowned. Members are invited to collaborate in projects around the world. 

After a six-year residency at Schauspielhaus Zürich (where they analysed the figure of Carmen for a first time), the ensemble now returns to the basis of their working methods: collective creation, iterative composition and collision of genres.

strike is directed by Wu Tsang, founding member of Moved by The Motion. Tsang is an American performer, director and filmmaker whose work has been shown in the most prestigious museums (MoMA New York, Tate Modern London, etc.). In 2018, she won the MacArthur Genius Grant and since the beginning of 2025 she has been a lecturer at Harvard University.