TERRITORIES.... VIOLENCE.... SIGNALS.... INTIMACY.... INTERFERENCE.... REVERSAL
based on the concept for a live/digital dance concert after Reinaldo Arenas' novel "before night falls"
choreography/film: Johannes Birringer
music and mixing: Steve Pare and Patrick Clark
performance: Johannes Birringer, Rebecca Lowe, Angeles Romero, Emmanuel Woodward
Photosculptures by Hans Staartjes
Diverse Works, Houston, May 21,1998, 8:oo pm
In the foreground of this production, NORTH BY SOUTH, is the dancer’s
fantasized relation to the inside of the limited or “one-sided”
body. The movement of the restricted body, within a reduced visual field
of four territories onstage, corresponds to the body’s inner relation
to the outside and to our perception of movement control of our own body,
our skin (tactile) sensors, our connection to space and the images of space
we produce (intimacy, memory, sexual space, shared space, safe space, risk
space, distance and proximity to others, constricted space, magical/virtual
space). The primary vocabulary of this composition is limited movement (dance)
in a highly evocative visual environment, allowing the audience to project
their own stories, characters and destinies into this theatre of evocation.
The movement is linked to interactive designs and programming of electronic
music. The composers have written 16 modules (loops that repeat themselves)
in developing the musical structure.
On the metaphorical level, the bodyspaces are all linked to the memory of
the body in particular places of our past lives or in contact with concrete
organic substances/objects. This is a sculptural work process (including
analog and some digital media, especially sound and color and actual textures
in real space).
The compositional process has been performed live, and the music has been
released on CD-ROM (AlienNation label)
The six movements start out from the idea of the inside of the body, the "knots of resistance."
We worked for a while mostly in acoustic/musical terns, finding a "notation" or structure for composition. We decided to work with very small modules of sound that - programmed on the computer - repeat themselves and build through repetition a kind of physiological experience of spatial sound.
This influenced the choices we made (volume, tempo). Our music is all electronic and played live, the programmes are triggered, not by sensors, but by movements we feel (inside) and are limited in making.
The choreography is limited to the left side of the body, minimal, slowly growing extensions.
Thus the performance is centered on limitation: one side of the body.
The sides that evolve include: heart, part of spine, left arm, left foot, soles.
We mixed the physical surfaces (body) with metaphors of incorporation and with sculptural bodies on stage: photosculptures, earth, blue cloth, rose petals, flour, water, mango.
The movements that evolve are inner poetry, a listening to the knots.
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