Introducing: Orphée et Eurydice
20 December 2020
Orphée et Eurydice is one of four Immersive projects that join us at the 2021 edition of CineMart. It is an alluring combination of both VR and opera, in which the classic 18th century opera Orphée et Eurydice composed by Christoph Willibald Gluck, based on the myth of Orpheus, has been reimagined by a team of creative collaborators. It is a pleasure this year to be joined by local Rotterdam-based interdisciplinary filmmaker and musician Robin Coops, whose inspiration it was to adapt this classic work.
Coops has a background in music, theatre and film, having studied at the Institute of Performative Arts in Maastricht, followed by a master's at the Royal Conservatory of Music in The Hague, and finishing with a second master’s at the Film Academy in Amsterdam. As a result, his work tends to be a balance of these mediums. “I make music-driven work, but I always search for the right form and the right collaboration for the projects, which means it can be an opera, it can be a music film or a dance film. But I’m always searching for what the story needs, for what it should tell, so I try not to think with boundaries anymore”, says Coops.
This desire to cross boundaries brought him quite naturally to the VR medium. “It comes from my theatre background, and my interest already in immersive theatre, so it's very logical to have this 360 experience. I think it's a very theatrical element – not only by experiencing it, and having it all around you but as well to look at the audience when they are experiencing it; they become performers almost.”
Coops and his collaborators have a strong vision for an adaptation that combines both live theatrical and VR elements to gain a totally new perspective on this classic work. “Those people who have the glasses on become almost part of the choreography. As they move through the underworlds they become the dancers in their movements, or the choir almost in the piece.” VR director Avinash Changa plays a vital role in the project, having founded Amsterdam-based WeMakeVR studio in 2013, and is joined also by composer Zbigniew Wolny and librettist Willem Bruls.
Coops’s short graduation film Touch premiered at IFFR 2020 in the RTM (Rotterdamdag) selection, so comes to CineMart with a track record at the festival and an admiration for its like-minded desire to transgress the same boundaries as his work. Speaking of his ambitions for CineMart, he says “the most important thing for me is not getting something out of it directly, but about a dialogue; to be questioned, to question this form of cinema, ask questions of the VR. It is always about research – it is not that we know what we want and then we produce it. I don't believe in that structure. I believe in research, collaborating, and I hope to find those people at CineMart; people who are not scared to jump into this journey.”
