L.A.V.A. = lava, a metaphor for eruption.

In our research into L.A.V.A., the new international co-production with Compagnia Zappalà Danza premiering this summer, we invite you into the making and thinking process—into chance discoveries and associations that rise to the surface.

In 1986, Ursula Le Guin delivered a lecture that became an important reflection on how power is thought and spoken about. It addressed feminism and how women’s language was positioned as subordinate to that of men—the father’s tongue. Beyond biological sex, she spoke of a language of power rooted in authority and dominance. The father’s tongue preaches, prescribes, commands. The language of the white man operates through opposition and does not expect a reply. The mother’s tongue, by contrast, is everyday, conversational, responsive—it seeks connection: Do you have your umbrella? My feet hurt. My heart is breaking. Touch me. Can you pass the salt? A language that travels on the exhale, always suspended between silence and music. The entire lecture is a fiery plea, exposing the mechanisms by which certain voices are silenced.

Although much has changed since the 1980s in the positions of women and men, and the lecture at times feels dated, the underlying mechanism remains strikingly current: in debates around climate, gender, and decolonisation, We Are Volcanoes resounds as a passionate call.
“When women speak truly they speak subversively—they can’t help it: if you’re underneath, if you’re kept down, you break out, you subvert. We are volcanoes. When we women offer our experience as our truth, as human truth, all the maps change. There are new mountains. That’s what I want—to hear you erupting. You young Mount St. Helenses who don’t know the power in you—I want to hear you. I want to listen to you talking to each other and to us all.”