“PAINTINGS”
Dances for Confluence Ballet Co.
Music by Ayça Akin
1. Melisande
Concept
Trapped between a painful past and a doomed future, Melisande moves through elusive memory and foreboding while accompanied by her past and future selves. Inspired by Marianne Stokes’ painting Melisande, her story unfolds beneath the looming shadow of a tragic fate.
In an eerie dreamscape set in a liminal space, this ballet is a poetic interpretation of Maurice Maeterlinck’s play Pelléas et Mélisande, upon which the painting was based. The tragic story follows a harrowed fate for two forbidden lovers. However, this version of the story is told entirely from Mélisande’s perspective, focusing on her internal experience in the play rather than the external events surrounding them.
Story
At a forest spring, Melisande weeps without memory, shadowed by a quiet dread. Past Melisande arrives, fleeing a painful relationship symbolized by the crown in the water. She pushes Melisande away from it, unable to face what she once escaped. Future Melisande enters with a wound above her heart, bearing the knowledge that she will die. As Melisande is drawn toward the water again and again, Past Melisande tries to hold her back while Future Melisande guides her towards her fate.
After an attempt to deny her feelings and hold herself against the mirrored wall, Melisande can no longer deny the truth. When Future Melisande reaches for her, Melisande accepts her fate and collapses.
2. The Mothers
Concept
Following the devastation of World War I, German artist Käthe Kollwitz created a set of prints centered on those who remain after mass loss. Having lost her own son early in the war, Kollwitz turned her attention to grief, rendering it as both personal and collective. The Mothers, part of her War portfolio, depicts a group of women bound together into a single, sculptural form, their bodies pressed into solidarity, becoming both shelter and resistance.
This dance takes inspiration from that image to explore how care, loss, and the weight of violence are carried. The work examines shared endurance and resilience. The dance highlights the intimacy of individual sorrow and the power of collective support, honoring the many ways humans absorb, witness, and resist forces that transcend the individual.
Story
The dance centers on a lone soldier driven forward by a relentless marching rhythm, moving with fear and exhaustion. A group of mothers emerge from the darkness as a unified force, forming a shifting circular boundary around him that both protects and contains. Though the soldier is repeatedly pulled or slips beyond their reach, the mothers instinctively respond, drawing him back and sharing the weight of his struggle.
This cycle of separation and return continues without resolution, emphasizing endurance rather than victory. When facing inward, the mothers offer comfort; when facing outward, they resist violence. In the end, the soldier disappears from their grasp, yet the mothers remain, continuing their act of holding and resistance.
AYÇA AKIN is an award-winning composer based in the United States. Akın studied piano performance at Carnegie Mellon University’s Music Preparatory School. From 2022 to 2024, she completed her orchestral composing studies under composer and teacher Leon Willett. Akın holds degrees from the University of Michigan and Carnegie Mellon University.
Recognized for her musicality and emotional depth, Akın has since composed concert works and scored several films. In 2025, Akın was nominated for “Best Composer of the Future” at the Cannes World Film Festival for her original score of award-winning film The Balloon (2025).
In 2025, Akın was winner of the Annual Concert Competition for the International Alliance for Women in Music. Virago Symphonic Orchestra premiered her piece Tempesta in Cologne, Germany this September. Other recent commissions include music for New York City’s Ensemble Ipse and new music for Confluence Ballet Company’s Spring 2026 season.
More about Ayça can be found at:
www.ayca-akin.com