Aira Naginevičiūtė’s contemporary dance performance Chimera’s Beads on stage features five women dancers of different ages and experiences. The five women embody powerful feminine archetypes related to a mythical monstrous creature. The fire-breathing female creature is unpredictable; it can be dangerous, tender, loving or motherly.

Each of the five women in the performance is undergoing a cycle of transformations while maintaining their own rhythm and movement flow. They slide their desires, illusions, and experiences as beads on a string, shedding their skins as snakes and leaving them behind in order to go on with the eternal cycle of life. Women on stage do not abide by the standards of beauty: the costume designer and choreographer change and transform women’s bodies to emphasize unusual forms and proportions, which signify their strengths and feminine vitality.

Rather than being monstrous creatures, chimeras on stage represent female archetypes: life giving Mother, poisonous messenger Snake, and all-encompassing unrestrained Passion, which sets into motion the cycle of death and rebirth of the three-headed creature.

For five years choreographer Aira Naginevičiūtė has been working with composer Vladas Dieninis experimenting on the overlap of sound and dance and creating music by means of dance. The artists use various constructions, objects, environment and bodies of dancers to create sound sculptures here and now. Dancers aim to transform accoustic environmental signals into optical structures, to turn invisible music into a visible movement.

Spatial scenography, optical music, and the aesthetics of “not beautiful” bodies marked by women hard experiences intrigue a spectator.