VĒRPETE / WHIRLWIND

Dance and music performance

TUVUMI (2022)/New Theatre Institute of Latvia (2015)

The performance lasts 45–50 minutes without intermission.

Authors, choreographers, performers: Krišjānis Sants, Erik Eriksson
Musicians: Mārtiņš Miļevskis (vibraphone), Rihards Lībietis (guitar)
Costume designer: Ieva Gaurilčikaitė-Sants
Production: TUVUMI (2022)/New Theatre Institute of Latvia (2015)
With the support of: Creative Europe Programme [DNA], Latvian State Culture Capital Foundation, Swe-Lat Fund

In Vērpete (vortex, whirl), creators and performers Erik Eriksson and Krišjānis Sants take as their starting point the principle of the spinning pair – a movement rooted in games and traditional folk dance – and develop it into a dance of precision, speed, trust, and exhilaration. Spinning hand-in-hand through space, the performers draw the audience into a shared experience. Together, they create dynamic patterns of repetition. The performance is accompanied by live music – vibraphone and guitar – crafting a dense and enveloping soundscape, performed by Mārtiņš Miļevskis and Rihards Lībietis. The audience shares the same space as the performers, and many have described the experience as being in the midst of a natural force – first felt by the body, then understood by the mind. Vērpete premiered in 2015 at the Homo Novus festival and received the Latvian Performing Arts Award for Achievement of the Year in Contemporary Dance (2016). It was restaged in 2022 at the HOROS festival and has since toured extensively across Sweden, Latvia, and Lithuania. In 2024, it was featured at the Baltic Dance Platform and selected for the Swedish touring network Dansnät.

Erik and Krišjānis met in Brussels while studying at the dance school P.A.R.T.S. and have collaborated on numerous projects since then. Erik Eriksson (Sweden) earned his MFA from the Danish National School of Performing Arts in 2022. He works as a performer, teacher, and choreographer across Sweden, Latvia, Belgium, and Finland, with a special focus on sharing the physical sensation of dancing. Krišjānis Sants (Latvia) holds an MA in Scenography from the Latvian Academy of Arts (2018). He is part of the artistic duo IevaKrish and, together with Ieva Gaurilčikaitė-Sants (LT/LV), creates performances that explore tacit spatial and rhythmic communication and contemporary reinterpretations of traditional Baltic polyphonic singing. As a performer, Krišjānis also works internationally with fieldworks/Heine Avdal & Yukiko Shinozaki, and he leads the HOROS dance residency and festival in western Latvia. Mārtiņš Miļevskis is a versatile percussionist who has performed with several well-known Latvian bands such as H2O, Astro'n'out, Otra Puse, the folk group Auļi, as well as with orchestras in Riga and Liepāja. Rihards Lībietis is an acoustic guitarist and composer who has released four albums with his instrumental band Rihards Lībietis Orchestra.