VIRTUALLY, IN THE FLESH

Compelling futuristic visions for humanity, giving body to virtual technologies


Transenses
Akiko Kitamura (Japon) & Navid Navab
25 minutes
Akiko and Navid’s gestural-sonic mantras transcend aesthetic form to make the imperceptible palpable. That is to say, we embark with them on a metaphysical journey—of a body in conversation with the living cosmos. The interactive scenography and gestural sound instruments, invisible to the senses, infuse the subtlest of movements with sound, bringing the body into prominence. We are fully immersed in unstable “sonic architectures”, which dissolve the dancer’s micro-movements into an ocean of ephemeral micro-intelligences. In turn, textural tonalities of the body’s movement cause this sonic ecology to morph, and self transmute in an endless performative feedback that is spatially confusing and temporally unsettling. A compelling trans-sensorial universe that will pull you surely, inevitably into its vertiginous trance-like ritual.


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Teoma Naccarato & John Maccallum (États-Unis)
30 minutes
In this intermedia and interactive encounter, the theatre is turned inside out. The dancers and musicians perform behind us; it is only by way of mirrors that we piece together moments, as if editing a live film from our own perspective. Gradually, we are offered sensory fragments: the reflection of a torso sweeping past; gentle pulsations in the floor; wandering rhythms in the live instrumentation – provoked by the heartbeat of the dancers. It is difficult to capture anything or anyone, fully. There is darkness and stillness; there is breath; there is intense physical exertion and exhaustion. Nothing concludes. Everything assembles and shatters. It shatters like glass, and as we piece the shards back together, unfamiliar forms emerge.


Binary Animal
Alejandro De Leon | Lost & Found
3 x 15 minutes
The intimate café-bar and corridors surrounding our theatre become sites for performance! Binary Animal is a series of short installation pieces exploring our virtual identities. We have freedom of movement within this performance parcours, choosing what we want to see of the two captive dancers, connected via live stream video. We can only glean a few fragments at a time by turning towards either bodies or their projected alter egos. The superimposition of both realities discloses metaphorical questions about the duality of our identities: the one we reveal on the Internet, and the one we attribute to ourselves in “real” life. How much do we lose of ourselves, every day of our lives, in this virtual illusion?