“It’s been on my mind since the beginning,” said choreographer DD Dorvillier of the idea behind the performance “Extra Shapes,” opening next week as part of the Kitchen’s ongoing series “From Minimalism Into Algorithm.” The “it” Dorvillier refers to here, is, in fact, ice cream. Neapolitan ice cream, to be precise.“Extra Shapes” is organized with three rectangular playing spaces dedicated to dance, light, and music, adjacent but separate, like the dessert’s classic combination of vanilla, chocolate, and strawberry. “Each stripe is home to its own medium — sound on one side, light in the center, dance on the other side,” Dorvillier wrote in an email to ARTINFO.Likewise, the performance is also divided into three parts: each lasts 17 minutes, after which the audience moves to a new side of the rectangular performance space composed of the dance, light, and music stripes. “It’s the changing perspective of the viewer that becomes crucial to the completion of the piece,” Dorvillier said.Along with Dorvillier, Walter Dundervill and Katerina Andreou collaborated on the dance sequence, while Thomas Dunn designed the lightshow and Sébastien Roux the sound installation.“It’s not a dance work. It’s a performance work that engages the senses through the difference between three different mediums,” said Dorvillier. In the interview below, the choreographer discussed what to expect at the Kitchen performance, which opens March 25.So Neapolitan ice cream was the starting point for you — how does this symbol work as a metaphor for the performance? As the experience of the ice cream drastically changes when it melts, everything turns a strange pasty color because you lose the distinction of the flavors and the colors that match them. We are dedicated to keeping within the boundaries of our “flavors” — strawberry (sound), vanilla (light), chocolate (movement) — so that “Extra Shapes” doesn’t fuse its parts and become a quirky dance piece decorated with fancy music and lights.How did the choreographers, light designer, and composer collaborate on the work?The parts of the piece (dance, music, light) were created autonomously with no interference by the other mediums. Thomas made a lightshow. Sébastien made a sound installation. Katerina, Walter and I made the dance sequence, together. The most important constraint was to give the other parties total freedom and autonomy, and we each respected that. It's not a dance work. It's a performance work that engages the senses through the difference between three different mediums. It allows the spectator to focus on things in a different way (i.e. not always watching through the dance as the main topic.Walk us through the choreography in your section of the performance.The dance stripe begins with a sequence of darting lunging figures in a complicated rhythmic pattern with lots of pregnant spaces between movements, followed by a very slow traveling section, ending in an upright skipping sequence, which moves back and forth within the chocolate stripe.The music stripe is an electronic score, which is played back through a spatialized configuration of speakers. It draws from a sonic palate that acutely pushes the boundaries of spatial and sound perception, so that the same sounds appear differently to the ear from each of the different seated perspectives. The light stripe is a wall of light through which the dancers never pass, that visually separates the sound from the dance. The experience is at times visceral rather than graphic, and plays with subtle optical effects on the eye. The light is not focused on the dancers or on the music stripe. Only through the spilling and bouncing of surplus light from the vanilla stripe are the other two spaces illuminated. Sometimes the dance is in the dark because of this.And how does it relate to the light and sound pieces adjacent to it?Neither the dance, nor the other parts, “relate” in any particular manner, except for the fact that they occur simultaneously. I would say that we share a common experience and sensibility because a lot of the material was created while we were together in the same studio, and the influence was alive there.The work is part of the Kitchen’s series “From Minimalism Into Algorithm.” Did you have any historic Minimalist artworks in mind while creating it — or are you using forms of serial repetition, for instance?The music for “Extra Shapes” is in three parts. It’s performed by a Max/MSP patch, comprised of many algorithms. All the sounds are synthesized by the computer. The three parts focus on different sonic aspects from spatialization to canonic or combinatory procedures.I’m using a series of numbers in the dance sequence applied to the different sections of it, which produce different results in each. This set of numbers makes it possible to stabilize a pattern externally (without improvising or depending on being in a particular state in order to perform it). The numbers are the piece.
↧