on stage on 10 May with Impostor, Spazio Rossellini
The title of our season is “Vertigine”. What is vertiginous to you?
Curiously vertiginous for me would literally mean making one extremely dizzy, by excitement, or height or extreme physicality, and I think that in my work I strive for exactly the opposite in my execution, and in structural austerity and simplicity. Yet at the same time, the objects themselves, the light setting, the lush soundtrack all go to create a visceral experience, indeed something that would be considered as vertiginous. And this paradox intrigues me, that using something simple and ancient such as puppetry and combining it with the correct dose of intentioned technology you can create a visceral and vertiginous experience for the observer.
Who is the “impostor” in your work? What kind of imagery affects bodies when they dance with a non-human body like a puppet?
In the piece there is no single impostor, and the question is more who supplants who. In the work I chase the idea of non duality and that there are no absolutes, only positions between polarities, and as such all the personae present make up one presence.This plays rather beautifully into the idea of animation, of being present, or not, a creates a visual contradiction as to who is controlling who, who occupies the role of protagonist and who simply plays along,
For me it has been interesting to observe when my body’s presence is necessary for the puppet to live, and when it must fade into the background and I have enjoyed this removal of focus away from my own body as a dancer to that of the object, where any action has to be originated by the object removing the possibility of self obsession!
But to be honest, what fascinates me most about this work is the observers desire to believe, to give life to what it knows is an inanimate object. This illustration of our ability for abstract thought reminds me of our human nature, and I think that is what I wish to remind the audience of in every work I make… and I think this segues into your next question.
What power does dance have to change imaginaries related to the body and affect the world?
I don’t believe that dance directly changes/affects the world! Particularly not any piece I make, but I do believe that it should awaken the conscious, critical mind, that we should then apply to our everyday life. I think the very fact that we are capable of creating artistic forms and that we chose to watch them, shows our desire to share, to reflect, to be curious, to be critical. If somehow what we witness on stage makes us look at and question what we see around us, reminds us of who we are, makes us question who we are, then I hope it makes for maybe not for something as great as a better world, but a balanced, aspiring and thoughtful world…