SSIDT is a research-to-practice course reconsidering the function, philosophy, and reality of an evolving stage in relation to its distinct choreographic process and performing body.
CONCEPT: "Dances that inhabit; Occupying Landscapes and to be Occupied". This includes movements that sympathize with an environment or embody an environment or be enveloped by an environment.
ENVIRONMENT: The 27th floor of a high rise in the Fort Greene, Brooklyn area. As there isn't a lot of high rises in front of the building, the wind is a constant reminder of where I am. I've become very interested in this unstable force that is the weather and wind around me during quarantine. I've observed, reacted and created a relationship through this project with the wind surrounding me.
Dancing the Wind
THE SCORE: How does nature move through man made landscapes? Wind blowing through high rises, tree roots exploding through concrete, flooding of coastal areas of cities because of rising sea levels or hurricanes/floods.
What is most relevant to where I am right now? My Home? What is wind? Wind is air in motion - it travels areas of different pressure.
Why is there such difference in air pressure? When air heats up - the atoms and molecules move faster and spread out. It expands and rises. The colder air molecules move more slowly and are closer together, so the colder air sinks. So this creates two different air pressures. When this happens the air will move from high pressure to low pressure to equalize the pressure.
THE NOTATION: My hands are the sun and the heat, the catalyst, the starter. My body the cold river, the sea and the land. Following it or going against it.
Heating up and staying cold. Staying rooted in the ground.
My hands move my body - slowly and then fast - with or without tension.
The weather is a temperamental process. Nature is a force we cannot control. This piece is my way of improvising a relationship with it.
Bibliography:
Bachelard, Gaston: The Poetics of Space. Boston: Beacon Press, 1958.
Hunter, Victoria. Moving Sites: Investigating Site-Specific Dance Performance. New York: Routledge, 2015.