HouseStory/A public salon
I anledning Dansens Dager presenterer dybwikdans 28. - 30. april 2012 prosjektet HouseStory. Prosektet inngår i en pågående undersøkelse av stedsidentitet og koreografi. Prosjektet bygger på de undersøkelser som er gjort i kunstprosjektet A unique house story.
I prosjektet deltar Lisa Kendall, Nils Christian Fossdal, Siri Dybwik og fotografen Rune Bergan.
Prosjektet finner sted i Schivesgate 5, Stavanger.
Prosjektet er støttet av Stavanger kommune og Rogaland fylkeskommune.
For mer informasjon:
HouseStory:
by invitation, a spontaneous solo encounter in private houses: on reflection, a duet for two bodies, two voices – a public salon performance in a private house.
This development of A Journey Through Private Houses and Under One Roof sees the solo dancer encountering and engaging with the private house at the invitation of the inhabitant(s). The aim of the dancer is to develop an improvised movement language in dialogue with the shifting and intimate atmosphere of the private house. The dancer develops and explores movement languages and impulses for spontaneous dance making in response to in-situ stimuli, respecting yet perhaps subverting the dailyness and order of the private domestic arena.
Beginning the explorative encounter as soon as the threshold of the host property is crossed, the dancer instantly inhabits the liminal space between the expected and the unpredictable, encouraging the observer to witness and experience their familiar surroundings from a fresh and innovative perspective. In this bizarre situation of the private house as experiential site, and in response to the physical and metaphysical characteristics of each house-site, the dancer collects the imprint of the danced encounter in herself, constantly invoking body as site and site as body.
Moving through the host’s house the dancer redirects the gaze and experiences of the observer, inviting the observer/host to participate in this bizarre and personal exploration of site and situation. Who is the dancer and who the observer? Where does the performance arena begin and end? Are the walls, doors and windows of the house able to capture and contain the danced encounter? The inhabitants of each house and their guests are invited to experience and document the live danced encounter in whatever way they wish - photography, video, written word, Skype. The multi-perspective documentation challenges notions of the private and public, exposing multiple objects and subjects of which the dancer is only one. Simultaneously the danced encounter within the private house adds to the rich history of the space in which the inhabitants choose to live much of their every day life-stories.
Throughout the experience of the danced encounter, the dancer will metaphorically yet intentionally, steal/borrow an imagined or actual story from each of the house-sites visited. Immediately after leaving each house-site, a written or verbal score/text reflecting upon the danced encounter by the moving body as site in the house as experiential site, will be devised by the dancer. Both verbal and written scores/texts will reflect upon the dancers experience in-situ, revealing and exposing the fledgling dialogues between the sited body and experiential site: woven into these dialogic reflections will be the contributions of the inhabitants made to these very personal encounters. The dancer’s written documents will reflect upon and explore the potential for communication within the body as site and the house-site, and the intriguing and complex issues surrounding the inter-subjective notions of this project. All of the dancers written scores/texts will be collated in a journal and all verbal scores recorded: these documents will be integral to and installed at the public salon performance of HouseStory.
In devising the duet for two bodies and two voices it is proposed that the dancers original scores/texts will be explored and developed in close collaboration with an actor, defining the frame for a series of public salon performances in a private house to be held in May 2011. Elements of each of the stolen/borrowed stories from the spontaneous danced encounters in private houses will inspire and inform the making of the public salon performance. The resulting performative duet for voice and body will reveal and respond to, the multiplicity of bodies and voices encountered in the initial in-situ explorations. The duet will blur the boundaries between live and documented encounters merging performance and installation in this unusual setting of the private house as public venue.
Through devised and improvised materials the duet will consider how best to communicate the in-situ findings, whilst developing and presenting a new performance inspired by the original spontaneous danced encounters, a performance which plays with the communicative potential of the body in motion in response to the written and spoken word. The performers will inhabit the rhythm and texture of the spoken word, revealing the nuances of the documented words during this intimate public salon performance. The stolen/borrowed stories presented in HouseStory will present a bizarre and innovative reflection upon the original danced encounters, dancer and actor weaving the stolen stories into their spontaneous danced and spoken performative dialogues, creating a unique present and presence. The duet will evoke memories of the original encounters whilst adding to the present and the history of the chosen private house as public performance arena. The duet will reveal a personal and singular commentary on the way we choose to live and experience our living spaces and ourselves, with the performers incorporating factual and fictional artefacts into their physical and verbal storytelling.
HouseStory will evolve over an intensive three-week period. Week one of the project focuses on the live danced encounters, during which the dancer will experience, dance and document the stories stolen from each house-site. During week two the dancer and actor will collaboratively develop these stolen/borrowed stories devising an innovative textual frame to be explored in performance through a spontaneous live and installed dialogue. Week three presents the newly devised duet in a series of public salon performances in a private house.