this is not a solo
Performance and video work
12 minutes
Project idea

In this dance performance, choreographer and dancer Artémise Ploegaerts looks at the dis/embodiment of experiences made by listening to three different songs/pieces of music (Berlin by BRMC, Le Radeau by M and Tolstoi by Philip Glass). After selecting those, she repetitively danced on them (or on what she would remember from them). Her choice was based on sounds that are familiar to her, and that also relate to what she ‘likes’ to move on or on the contrary that challenges her physical reactions.
Improvising on those sounds, her habits, memories, and learning have come together allowing her to subjectively create movement. Movement is here seen as the possibility for experiences to come through the body. It is able to create different bodily textures, different bodies. Her dance was not set into a movement vocabulary.

During the performance, she dances along with a video projection of her past bodies: herself repetitively dancing on the sound of those three different songs. Each time she rehearses and performs this work, she films herself. Extracts of the new footages are then added to the work. Differences and similarities are therefore noticeable.

Although habits and physiology remain, some bodily conditions and reactions have changed during the process, witnessing a certain changeability of the body. Some sounds have been easier to embody than others. Thus Ploegaerts questions the potential expression of her cultural identity within the songs chosen and the movement performed. She investigates the notion of identity by suggesting its reliance to time. The body is permeable and in a constant state of becoming.


Description

It is while being in the dark that the spectators discover an excerpt of music. They can then have their own experience of what they are listening to. Once the silence comes back, Artémise enters on stage to dance her own version of the sound from what she remembers of it. While she is performing, a video projection appears. It shows her rehearsing the same movement material. Both the film and the performer dance together confronting the audience to the multiplicity of the body over time.

With the support of

Louis Hothothot studio
Dance Base Edinburg
Kulter
Possible memories Berlin
4bid gallery