04/14/2022

Lyra Pramuk live at Volksbühne ft. Kianí del Valle and Nana

A special performance of Pramuk’s debut album Fountain, with insights from the trio on how they transformed it through dance and movement.

Lyra Pramuk’s debut Fountain was one of 2020’s standout albums. Using her own voice as raw material to be transformed and played as an instrument, Pramuk explored ideas of post-humanism, gender and identity through what she called “futurist folk music”. Released just as the Covid pandemic began, the album become a healing vessel for listeners across the world, though Pramuk was unable to fully tour its tracks for over a year.

In September 2021, Pramuk premiered a special Fountain live show at Berlin’s Volksbühne, developed in collaboration with two members of the Berlin-based interdisciplinary dance company, KDV DANCE ENSEMBLE. On stage, Pramuk was accompanied by founding choreographer and director Kianí del Valle, as well as choreographer and performer Nana, who brought a new dimension to the music of Fountain through dance and movement.

“Every time I perform this music I learn something new about myself in the process,” Pramuk tells Fact. “It’s something that keeps giving back to me in a way that is dealing with healing and dealing with anxiety, fear, I deal with that every time I perform this music.”

As Kianí del Valle explains, setting Fountain to movement felt like a natural way to evolve the album. “There’s something about her vocal work not having specific words and going off a visceral impulse or emotion that I think it is really normal that dancers will connect to it,” del Valle says. “There’s something really powerful, like an immediate umbilical cord between the way that she’s using voice and the movement practice of any artist.”

In this original film from Fact, Pramuk, del Valle and Nana talk about their own personal relationships with Fountain, the inspirations behind their work and the live show, and how the ideas and themes behind Fountain closely align with the movement of the body. “Any type of movement releases endorphins that heal you, and it goes back to the album because [Lyra] chose to go to the body to figure out something [she was working with to heal herself], because the voice is connected to the body,” Nana says.

Delta, an album that features reworks of Fountain tracks by Colin Self, Caterina Barbieri, Eris Drew and more is available now on Bedroom Community. For more information on Lyra Pramuk and KDV Dance Ensemble visit their websites.