Zvov Sensory

By shutting down one of our senses, the brain starts to replace the impulses with imagination and becomes more alert to other senses. This performance invites the audience to enter a space of imagined reality, led by sounds and sensory experiences. You're welcome to come unprepared.

Since 2015 Zvov Sensory was performed in theaters, festivals, private locations, in the nature - in beaches and forests in The Netherlands, Belgium, Czech-republic, Denmark and Israel.

Zvov Sensory was premiered in Koninklijk Conservatory Spring Festival 2015, The Hague. The concept was created as a collaborative project of Zvuv String trio and Kc Composition department, with composers Yvonne Freckmann and Liisa Hirsch.

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Blindfolded, the audience members are lead by the hand into the performance space. With no sight to rely upon, the audience begins to trust the performers as their remaining senses heighten. Every sound, touch, and smell becomes magnified. Once in the isolated performance space they hear string instruments playing and moving around them, they sit down. Then the sensory theater experience has fully begun. Using various prepared objects, the sensory theater makers walk around the audience, introducing the stimuli to each person to create a fresh and exciting experience of discovery without sight. Suddenly the audience realizes they can even sense when somebody is approaching or standing next to them – or recognize smells or touch that further stimulates the imagination.

Two pieces of music are integrated among the free improvisation of Zvov trio: “Leaf Cycle” by Yvonne Freckmann and “FAR” by Liisa Hirsch. In “Leaf Cycle” the audience interacts with fresh and dry leaves while the trio plays the score, and in “FAR” the audience is encouraged to walk toward the sound of the string trio as a climax to the entire Zvov Sensory experience. After the music stops and the air clears, sensory performers take off the blindfolds and allow the audience to slowly exit the Zvov Sensory world and discuss their individual experiences over a cup of coffee or tea. This part of sharing thoughts is an equally crucial element of the process.

Zvov trio, in collaboration with composers Liisa Hirsch and Yvonne Freckmann, created Zvov Sensory, a sensory theater experience for small audiences. Zvov Sensory is an immersive and unique experience, inviting the audience to a new type of journey within the world of contemporary music.

Reflections by audience members

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"The Sensory theater of Zvov was for many spectators a very intense experience. The audience, blindfolded, not aware anymore of place and direction felt, smelled and heard sounds as never before. In the hands of Zvuv the sensory theater has a very potential future." -Martijn Padding; Head of composition department, The Royal Conservatory, The Hague

“A surprisingly, intimate and confronting experience, being blindfolded and therefore completely focused on the senses of hearing, feeling and smelling. The beautiful build-up and climax towards the end created a very interesting shift from the more individual minor space around me to the more general macro level of the space itself, through the expansion of the sound and form.” -Cornelis de Bondt; Composition teacher, The Royal Conservatory, The Hague

“Zvuv Sensory playfully disorientates the audience’s accustomed perspective, by offering what one can describe as an ultimate immersive, chamber music experience. The senses become particularly heightened to discerning the distance of things, as sounds of different materials move dynamically around one's aural space. The deprivation of vision, opens one’s senses to the rich texture of sonic experience.” -Yannis Kyriakides; Composition teacher, The Royal Conservatory, The Hague