EMBODYING ABSENCE (2023)
by Margherita Landi and Agnese Lanza
There’s a tendency to perceive absence as immaterial, forgetting that its perception requires access to our physical and emotional memories. In essence, we cannot miss what we don’t know or remember.
“Embodying Absence” represents the final phase of approaching the theme of absence. Following “Dealing with Absence” (absence as distance) and “Touching Absence” (absence as relationship), this last step entails a process of exploring and accepting absence as an inner state.
The project aims to work on real-time learning of a short movement score through a headset, then practicing inhabiting the voids of memory of what has been learned.
The choreographic contents depict scenes evoking something we all know well: children’s play, free and imaginative movement when around the age of 4-5 before being influenced by prejudices or expectations.
For a dancer, the challenging part of accepting memory gaps lies in the judgment that accompanies this moment. In this profession, dancers are expected not to forget any movement in a sequence. The aim is to bring the dancer back to those physical memories preceding the construction of these expectations, to rediscover the beauty of simplicity in any dimension, even in that of emptiness.
The Virtual Reality (VR) headset becomes both present and absent here, serving as the main experiential tool, a mask through which one learns in real-time, teleporting the performer to a childhood place of play and free movement, from which to spontaneously borrow gestures and sequences, constructing a different movement score for each person, albeit starting from the same video material.
The process consists of an “inside” invisible to the audience but perceptible through the dancer’s movements, and an “outside,” which is the resulting performative outcome.
INSIDE (360 video): Through workshops for children, immersive videos were developed where the user is surrounded by children moving and dancing in their own way.
OUTSIDE: A process of accumulation of bodies on stage will be developed. Through a single VR headset, one by one, the dancers learn the choreography. Then, they remove the headset and each one retraces their score until, one by one, following their own inner path and timing, they freeze.
Inhabiting the void of memory produces a mobile and attentive stasis that isn’t static but leads to an incessant inner movement, a rummaging through memories and sensations to retrieve lost gestures.
The phase of memory void will be extended for as long as possible, becoming the predominant phase of the project, an external stasis, resulting from an inner dance, a continuous retracing of the preceding and subsequent moments. A past and a future disconnected from that void, then surrendering to the presence of that single empty moment, which will no longer be “between” two moments but will be “the moment,” the present.
A second phase of the performance unfolds through intimate projections. Using mini projectors attached to their bodies, the artists will place some of the images from which the dancers have extracted choreographic material onto the dancers’ skin, as if bringing forth the visual and emotional memory that generated the show, which in this phase becomes an installation.
At the end of the installation/performance process, the audience will be able to view the choreographic materials through the VR headset, locating corners equipped.
Concept and Choreography
Margherita Landi e Agnese Lanza
Artistic Director, Video e Virtual Reality artist, Creative Technologist
Margherita Landi
Stage, light e sound design
Massimo Bevilacqua
VR Production
Gold
Performance Production
Fabbrica Europa, Compagnia SimonaBucci/Degli Istanti, Parc- Performance Art Research Center
EMBODYING ABSENCE (2023)
by Margherita Landi and Agnese Lanza
There’s a tendency to perceive absence as immaterial, forgetting that its perception requires access to our physical and emotional memories. In essence, we cannot miss what we don’t know or remember.
“Embodying Absence” represents the final phase of approaching the theme of absence. Following “Dealing with Absence” (absence as distance) and “Touching Absence” (absence as relationship), this last step entails a process of exploring and accepting absence as an inner state.
The project aims to work on real-time learning of a short movement score through a headset, then practicing inhabiting the voids of memory of what has been learned.
The choreographic contents depict scenes evoking something we all know well: children’s play, free and imaginative movement when around the age of 4-5 before being influenced by prejudices or expectations.
For a dancer, the challenging part of accepting memory gaps lies in the judgment that accompanies this moment. In this profession, dancers are expected not to forget any movement in a sequence. The aim is to bring the dancer back to those physical memories preceding the construction of these expectations, to rediscover the beauty of simplicity in any dimension, even in that of emptiness.
The Virtual Reality (VR) headset becomes both present and absent here, serving as the main experiential tool, a mask through which one learns in real-time, teleporting the performer to a childhood place of play and free movement, from which to spontaneously borrow gestures and sequences, constructing a different movement score for each person, albeit starting from the same video material.
The process consists of an “inside” invisible to the audience but perceptible through the dancer’s movements, and an “outside,” which is the resulting performative outcome.
INSIDE (360 video): Through workshops for children, immersive videos were developed where the user is surrounded by children moving and dancing in their own way.
OUTSIDE: A process of accumulation of bodies on stage will be developed. Through a single VR headset, one by one, the dancers learn the choreography. Then, they remove the headset and each one retraces their score until, one by one, following their own inner path and timing, they freeze.
Inhabiting the void of memory produces a mobile and attentive stasis that isn’t static but leads to an incessant inner movement, a rummaging through memories and sensations to retrieve lost gestures.
The phase of memory void will be extended for as long as possible, becoming the predominant phase of the project, an external stasis, resulting from an inner dance, a continuous retracing of the preceding and subsequent moments. A past and a future disconnected from that void, then surrendering to the presence of that single empty moment, which will no longer be “between” two moments but will be “the moment,” the present.
A second phase of the performance unfolds through intimate projections. Using mini projectors attached to their bodies, the artists will place some of the images from which the dancers have extracted choreographic material onto the dancers’ skin, as if bringing forth the visual and emotional memory that generated the show, which in this phase becomes an installation.
At the end of the installation/performance process, the audience will be able to view the choreographic materials through the VR headset, locating corners equipped.
Concept and Choreography
Margherita Landi e Agnese Lanza
Artistic Director, Video e Virtual Reality artist, Creative Technologist
Margherita Landi
Stage, light e sound design
Massimo Bevilacqua
VR Production
Gold
Performance Production
Fabbrica Europa, Compagnia SimonaBucci/Degli Istanti, Parc- Performance Art Research Center
