As one-Rushes-Infra

I am going to a lot of performances and theatre plays but it is difficult to see something that has a connection with my enquiries and my interests. Last week I went to a performance at the Royal Opera House after Esteban’s suggestion. Unfortunately I only found a ticket for the upper slips and I could see only the half of the stage… So maybe I have lost some small parts. Actually they were three dance performances, all of them with a scenography (or a kind of) made of projections and videos. The type of dance was a kind of contemporary ballet, an hybrid form that I cannot define accurately. But anyway, what drew my attention was the way they used the projections in relation to the choreography, the bodies, the narrative.

As one
In the first one, the projection was presenting the façade of a building with the different flat – windows, illustrated with different colours. The people moved inside them like shadows. Here, the projection is used more like a scenography and it contributes to the understanding of the narrative of the piece. But, in my opinion it worked only as a decorating element, while I would like a more interacting function of it.



Rushes – Fragments of a lost story
The second one was for me the best of all and the one more near to my practice. It was an atmospheric piece presenting fragments of a love story. We were presented parts of the narrative and not a linear, complete story. There was a bead curtain-screen, dividing the stage in two parts, where the images were projected. The dancers were moving in front of the screen and behind. When they were behind it, as there were some abstract images on it, a dreamy feeling was produced. Numbers counting down from an old film (I found out that the choreographer Kim Brandstrup, had studied film before choreography), images of a forest and some other abstract ones were projected on the screen. I liked very much this division of the stage by the screen that created like two realities. A fragmented story presented in a fragmented stage. On the back part of the stage there was another curtain, where took place another part of the choreography. Some dancers, looking more like shadows, were dancing there. Another layer of the narrative (and another layer of the projection), less important is unfolding on the back of the stage. In this performance, the projection is an organic and essential part of it. It is not simply scenography. The performers are interacting with it. By moving the curtain (screen) the images are shaking, disappearing and appearing again. It was a very simple idea that, in my opinion worked very well.



Infra
The last piece was interesting also but more from a point of view of the choreography and not the video. The video was a black and white screen showing people like shadows walking. For me, its most important function was to keep a tempo. The most powerfull scene was when a big group of dancers started walking to the same direction and with the same rythme with the video above them.