The Point activates different images of the body in using different language approaches. The first layers of the session will be about describing body parts or using specific anatomical terms. This enables the spectator to find connections between different parts of the body, as for instance between the left shoulder blade and the right hip joint, or between the eye muscle and the toes. The language of such a session is factual in order to lead towards awareness in action, as well as towards the ability to make contact simultaneously with one’s own skeleton and muscles, and with the actual environment. This factual terminology could be used as a tool for orientation.
The next layer will be the exploration of the possible sensation within the entire body, its skin, bones, organs, muscles, nerves, secretions and excretions, for being able to dissolve the boundaries between the inner and outer spaces of the body, its structure, its functionality, and its belonging.
The text of The Point proposes a specific way to describe the body and to re-imagine the act of love, the boundaries of the body, and a poetic language. The voice becomes an undefined identity. It triggers the idea that no one is a coherent, self-sustaining element; we are all internally divided and made up of many dissimilar characteristics.
Following the notion of the division and the multiplicity of the subject, the piece deals with different choreographic strategies
and body practices related to the text and it experiments within the relation between poetry, writing and choreography. It pro- poses multiple possibilities of addressing the inner and outer environments of the body, creating dysfunctional relations, uncanny images and phantasms. The project is an experimental and process-related event to be shared collectively in which the spectators are entirely involved.
Concept: Anne Juren
Performers: Varinia Canto Villa, Charlotte Ruth, Elizabeth Ward, Anne Juren
Music & Sound: Christophe Demarthe
Light & Technical Director: Bruno Pocheron
Artistic Management: Silke Bake
Coaching Foley Artist: Céline Bernard
Choreographic Assistant: Sara Lanner
Set & Photo: Roland Rauschmeier
Production: WTKB
Co-Production: ImPulsTanz Festival
Supported by: Municipal Department of Cultural Affairs
Premiere at ImPulsTanz, International Dance Festival, 21er Haus, Vienna, 2015
The book Pornografia was completed by the Polish writer Witold Gombrowicz in Argentina in 1958. Despite its provocative title, the novel disappoints the voyeuristic reader as it does not offer what it indicates. Instead, the author exposes processes of language, power and manipulation which are entangled in, and eclipsed by, the very mechanisms of voyeurism in language.
For her new performance piece, choreographer Anne Juren explores how these processes are involved in the gesture of writing. Accordingly, the piece results from a direct confrontation with the term “choreography” which literally means “dance-writing”. To achieve that, Juren extracted descriptions and actions by lead characters from the first part of the two-part novel, which she then translated into a choreographic notation. The resulting sequences of movements constitute the raw material the piece builds on, juxtaposing the dance sequences with the meaning of the word “pornography”, generally defined as “a written description or illustration of prostitutes or prostitution”.
Whereas pornography conjures up the explicit, which does not leave space for interpretation, Juren and the US American dancer Elizabeth Ward strive to open up spaces which allow a multiplicity of interpretations of physical expressions. The process of developing this piece as choreographic research is presented in this first of a series of try-outs.
Dance & Choreography: Anne Juren , Elizabeth Ward
Music direction & Sound design: Christophe Demarthe
Stage, Fanzine & Photo: Roland Rauschmeier
Technic: Alexander Wanko
Foley Artist: Nils Kirchhoff
Production: WTKB
Supported by: the City of Vienna and ImPulsTanz – Vienna International Dance Festival
Premiere at ImPulsTanz International Dance Festival, Odeon, Vienna, 2014