«No human group has ever been found moving quietly through reality in the manner of other animals: with no religion, no taboo, no ritual, no genealogy, no tales, no magic, no stories, no recourse to imagination, that is to say, without any fictions.» -Nancy Huston
At the offset of the creative process, given parameters set in motion the singularity of a project. In this case, two different performance settings, one in situ the other the black box. Then, the meeting with three highly capable female performers brings forth the desire to challenge and juxtapose their different qualities. Their shared level of expertise and their very different artistic worlds allows a research on the role of “perception”. How is something different only because of how it is lived, exposed and perceived? Starting simply with a material of 9 movement phrases, their random juxtapositions, solo, duo and trio direct the process. Interpretation is everything.
There is no projected core of inner certainty, only paths of random connectivity and acts of free will. We are the fictions we create and each of these fictions is a reality, a fragile, unique and fleeting invitation to lead the mind into new schemes of understanding. Sujectivity is everything.
Inspired by Canadian author Nancy Huston’s essay L’espèce fabulatrice, Fictions could have been titled “watching serendipity”… and choosing to follow it. It is a revealing process to discover from observation where resonance happens when bodies move and to arrest there one’s attention. Kinaesthesia is an open window on the singularity of being.
A first version of the fictions project, was created for the 2009 edition of Dusk Dances. Of this original version entitled Withrow park, only the study of movement systems and elements of environment were conserved, fragments of a plasticity that invited transposition and a new context. From the green of nature to that of the Chroma key, from the descending light of dusk to the coldness of fluorescence, from landscape to canvas, and all this to the black box: to construct an aesthetic space is to long for perception, feeling and sensing.
If nature is perceived as the place of truth where things exist in their simplest reality, in reverse the stage is the place where reality is recreated in hope of receiving it differently Yet a performance outside is as constructed as an emotion in the theatre can be real and yet again, both reveal our desire to recreate what seems natural. Again, subjectivity is everything. The fictions that we create are our truths.
Withrow Park
Choreographer > Marc Boivin
Dancers > Kate Alton + Kate Franklin + Kate Holden
Music >
Spem in alium, Thomas Tallis
RUNDFUNKCHOIR BERLIN
Costume > Marc Boivin
Outside eye > Sylvie Bouchard
Fictions : Chroma Key
Choreographer > Marc Boivin
Dansers > Kate Alton + Kate Franklin + Kate Holden
Music >
Arteries of Tokyo, Atau Tanaka
Bondage, Atau Tanaka
Winds of Guitar, Garlo
Forever Bach, Knut Nystedt
RUNDFUNKCHOIR BERLIN
Costume > Heather MacCrimmon
Lights > Bonnie Beecher
Set > Marc Boivin
Thanks : LADMMI L’école de danse contemporaire, Dancemakers and the Centre for Creation, Coleman Lemieux & Compagnie, Paul Chambers at Tangente.
The Fictions Project is a coproduction of DuskDances and firstthingsfirst productions
photo credit: John Lauener