SENSORIUM

From deep inside the dancers' bodies, movement that sharpens the senses and evokes poetic reveries


Aisthesis
Josiane Fortin
30 minutes
This is, above all, a composition about sensation. How does sensation make sense? Breathing together, sometimes with eyes closed, the two dancers are united in a “single shared body” but without physical or eye contact. Silence gives way to fluid guitar sounds and electronic organic compositions, darkness to subdued and textured lighting. We stand around and among them within the black box stage space, a proximity that enhances our ability to feel as they do, to release rationality and give in to sensation. French uber-dance theorist Michel Bernard provides the philosophical ground for this dance research, with his idea of a “fictive kinesphere” by which he means the poetic and energetic, malleable aura that surrounds the space around the dancers. This choreography also embraces his concept of a sensitive and intimate receptivity that he calls “chiasmatic” in which we mutually together touch each other lightly, listen, feel, witness, and breathe. Seeking sensation.


Viscosité
Anne-Flore De Rochambeau
30 minutes
After exploring fluids and gaseous bodies in her last creations, Fluides and O2, Anne-Flore turns her attention to the metaphoric power of viscosity. In this last chapter of her choreographic triptych, five moving bodies embody this liquid state through an aesthetic of thickness, porosity, fleshiness and stickiness. It is as if they are fine particles caught up the elastic ebbs and flows of watery substances. Nature and culture collide in this dense study of resistance to fluidity. The artist, with her visual sensibility, builds “moving architectures,” revealing a dance that is at once organic and intuitive. This is an allegory of our tenacious attachment to the group, to our own culture, home, ambitions, objects and others.


Sand Body
Meryem Alaoui
35 minutes
Nestled in the space between performance art and dance, Sand Body is a meditative choreographic work. The setting is simple: a plastic blue tarp, ten buckets of sand and the dancer-as-a-material. In this pared-down solo, the artist-performer interacts with the objects carefully. Moving ever-so-slowly she concentrates serenely on her tasks, leaving traces in and with the sand. Pulled between her desire to pursue dancing and lead a secluded life in meditation, the artist brings with her the “ethos of attention and awareness” in this sensitive composition. She questions the frenetic pace of our lives, inviting us to slow down, zoom in on details and so to deepen our spectating. Little by little, we enter into a contemplative state and finally take the time to sharpen our senses and savour the moment.