In order to obscure the journey we will meander in labyrinth of circles within circles by spiralling the time. Eleonora Siarava is a choreographer, performer, researcher and artistic director of Per_Dance platform of choreographic research (www.per-dance.com). Currently, she is a PhD Candidate at Aristotle University of Thessaloniki-Department of Theatre researching The multiple meaning in Abstract Dance: The choreographic synthesis and the possibilities provided by Perception Theories. In this context she studies the work of Oskar Sclemmer, Merce Cunningham, William Forsythe, Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker, Mette Ingvartsen et.al. Her research refers to the relationship between aesthetic forms, experiental awareness and the notion of atmosphere, the connection between cognitive principles, moving patterns and kinesthetic empathy. Eleonora was one of the participants in Incubator 2019 in the Castle Žďár nad Sázavou and shares here her vibrant memories of the castle journey.
Obscurity – A Choreographic Study
A fog of blurry realities
Atmosphere is the common reality of the perceiver and the perceived
Gernot Böhme, “Atmosphere as the Fundamental Concept of a New Aesthetics”
Visuality consists of an intricate intertwining of the one seeing and what is seen
This one seeing is always necessarily a body
[Looking] is an impure and always synaesthetic event that takes place in a body
Maaike Bleeker, “Visuality in the Theatre: The Locus of Looking”
A dark space formulated or shaped mentally, intellectually, emotionally through the human presence
A dark space existing independently containing bodies, objects, shadows, trajectories, words, whispers and sounds, or even light rifts that make everything disappear..
Their common reality
A cellar, a long corridor, a floor with suspended ceiling and closed doors, a bunch of keys forgotten, some unexpected snow in the springtime, stars constellations through the bare eye of an app
A dining table shelter, symbols and cultural genes underneath. What definitions and meanings to apply. Food is served. Nanostructures for desert, please
A tactile experience of a body sculpture, its hard and cold texture. Smoothly. The touch of playful fingers while navigating in the nowhere. Unfamiliar human figures from a deep past trapped in a touchscreen of a medieval museum. What am I doing there. And here
A dipole of invisibility and transparency as an expansion of time travelling as spiralling space. Constantly moving away but never escapes
A dancing Fergus amplified. And faded while multiplied in a mirror dramarurgy. Instant choreography. instant scenography. Here and now fights obscurity
But then again.. Diving in the obscurity sea. No expectations or references of description. Can blankness, or nothingness or emptyness create an ambivalent “somethingness”? What is there to emerge, unfold, get revealed
Entering sub-spaces through expanded limps, compressed bodies, imaginary pathways, followed traces. Often in stillness
Vision and visuality and visual imagery. Projections and hybrid entities under a blue light. And other multi-sensory percepts
Install Spaces within Spaces, invite moving bodies to resonate. Install atmospheres. A choreographic installation
Closed lights, closed eyes, non-blinking eyes in the peak of the day. Strange futuristic objects, vague structures and schemas. What to do with them
Blend them with some devices from your toolkit. It is called artistic process
Photographic memories. Or mind inventions
Bleeker, M., (2008) Visuality in the Theatre: The Locus of Looking. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan
Böhme, G., (1993) ‘Atmosphere as the Fundamental Concept of a New Aesthetics’. Thesis Eleven 36, 113-126
Eleonora Siarava
Per_Dance Choreographic Research Platform
www.per-dance.com
