Desire Paths

Desire Paths - experimental music theatre: Sunday 15 November 2026, 17:00–18:00, Basement, Copenhagen. Tickets cost 100 kr.

Desire Paths is written for solo soprano, amplified shoes, transducer gloves and video, by composer Connor McLean with singer/performer Ly Tran.

The work explores the question of how to be present in the world. Ly Tran moves across the stage in a search for meaning, identity and beauty, not necessarily finding complete answers, but their outlines emerge. Loneliness, fear, anxiety and longing are explored through the objects we attach ourselves to, and through the small roles we take on in everyday life.

McLean has built a performance system of transducers, microphones, small speakers and portable electronic instruments, where sound arises through movement, touch and storytelling. Ly is both the sounding material and the dramaturgical tension in the work - she is at once instrument and stage. Her walk, touch and voice are part of the composition alongside lighting, floor, microphones and screen, and the performance points to the friction between people and the objects surrounding them, and between desire and disconnection.

As the work's central figure, Ly is strongly exposed, delivered to both the audience's and the composer's gaze under the stage's magnifying glass. She demonstrates the impossibility of "finding oneself" among all the signs and meanings we are otherwise presented with as tools for doing just that.

The project is supported by the Danish Arts Foundation and Koda Kultur.