A sensual, exuberant performance where silence is acknowledged and spaces in between become choreographed. Ten sculptures enter a dialogue with eight dancers, who resonate the abstract geometries, yielding new physicalities.
Throughout the performance, the dancers establish an intimate relation with the stage, forming a shifting poem-landscape. The work embraces a collaborative approach, where every collaborator has shared their vision and material. The result is a revelry of dance, that raises questions on body representation, gender performativity and musical narration.
Four musical pieces, dated from mid XIX to late XX century, create a varied melodic scenery for How to cope with a sunset when the horizon has been dismantled. The assemblage of compositions — by four white male referents of western music – is no means following an aesthetic or historical line, but rather constructing a dissonance of styles. The poetic motivation is to enter into a collision between the music and the dancers’ bodies: to resignify our relation with the music, with our referents, not to illustrate given narratives or predictable emotions. The dancing body resists automatisms.
At a time when the great stories that gave meaning to our world are collapsing, and millions of minor but singular stories float looking for their place, the presence of moving bodies claim to reconsider other paths. The practices to subvert our relation with past certainties are indispensable.
How to cope with a sunset when the horizon has been dismantled emerges from the pleasure of composing with bodies, exploring the changing nature of light, cohabiting an ephemeral construction. Lines that fade, horizons that disappear, in an arid world full of constantly transforming filters.
Premiered on February 3rd, 2022 (season Traces Left Within), opening of Holland Dance Festival