Two parallel worlds, connected via TV and video links, become a performance space, interface and playground between the audience and performers.
RELAY dares you to disguise, transform and question roles, identities and realities, creating a performance unique to the audience on the night. Determined by your choices and engagement with the performers - your willingness to relay.
Performers: Donatella Cabras, Gabriele Reuter
Media/Video artists: Barret Hodgson & Morgan Caney
Lenght: 50min
Max Audience: 20
co-production:
Arts Council of England, fabrik Potsdam, Greenwich Dance Agency & Tanzplan Deutschland, The Place, Create KX
'Spectatorship is not passivity that has been turned into activity. It is our normal situation. We learn and teach, we act and know as spectators who link what they see with what they have seen and told, done and dreamt. There is no privileged medium, as there is no privileged starting point. Everywhere there are starting points from which we learn something new, if we dismiss, firstly, the presupposition of the distance; secondly, the distribution of the roles; thirdly the borders between the territories. We have not to turn spectators into actors; we have to acknowledge that any spectator already is an actor of his own story and that the actor also is the spectator of the same kind of story.
Jacques Rancière, ‘The Emancipated Spectator
artistic concept & research
At the core of this dance piece we question the roles of spectator and performer through an exploration of the act of watching. We are interested in the border between observing and taking part, the transition between watching and doing. The piece calls for an audience that constantly negotiates their own interest in each moment of the performance. And constantly questions the reality of their perception.
The movement material of the piece is closely connected to themes of intimacy and status/power-games within a small group or two individuals. The use of costumes, masks, wigs and masking tape to retrace pathways of audience and performers is worked into a complex system of individual and group scores for each spectator, adding to a dramaturgy that ultimately alters the performance space through audience choice.
The piece is hosted in two small rooms – a performance room and a watching/waiting room. Video cameras in the performance room connect to the watching room via a live video-link. According to the audiences’ choice, the number of audience members in the performance room and the time spent inside varies throughout the piece.
biographies
Donatella Martina Cabras is from Italy. In 2001 she moved to London where she graduated at the London Contemporary Dance School. She has worked with Diversions and choreographers like Rick Nodine, Ruby Worth, Karl Jay-Lewis, Henrietta Hale, Ben Duke and Raquel Meseguer and Frauke Requardt. She has also performed in dance-films directed by Joanna Callaghan, Jovair Longo and Miranda Pannell. In summer 2006 she was one of the six participants of ‘Jerwood Bank2006’, dance project lead by Siobhan Davies Dance Company. Improvisation is one of her main interests and she has taken part in improvised performances at various venues around London. Most recently she performed with PunchDrunk in their last production `The Masque Of The Red Death`.
Barret Hodgson – Barret is a digital alchemist and video artist based in the UK. His company Vent Media specialises in creating content for live events, festivals,theatre and dance performance, music events, gallery installations and commercial projects. Barret studied fine arts BA hons at the University of Newcastle-Upon-Tyne and Collaboratove Arts Practise MA at Trent University Nottingham. more info on his website: www.ventmedia.co.uk
Morgan Caney is a multi-media artist and improvising musician currently based in Barcelona and Nottingham. Experienced in working in both live performance and installation contexts - his practice combines considerable technical knowledge with an active imagination and a full embrace of the unexpected.
For more info visit www.i-invisible.com
previous performances
December 2006
Artists-in-Residence at fabrik Potsdam
(Donatella Cabras, Gabriele Reuter & Raquel Meseguer)
Professional Research labs for dance artists and first work-in-progress showing of “green room” on 20 December 2006
July 2007
Research at Greenwich Dance Agency, London
(Donatella Cabras, Gabriele Reuter, Raquel Meseguer & Dramaturge Martin Hargreaves)
August 2007
Participation at the choreographic weeks at fabrik Potsdam supported by Tanzplan Deutschland
(Donatella Cabras, Gabriele Reuter & Dramaturge Martin Hargreaves)
Eight hour-long improvisation showing and public presentation of the project at fabrik on
4th August 2007
October 2007
Solo research phase at fabrik Potsdam
(Gabriele Reuter)
Work-in-progress showing at Herbstleuchten Open Studios on 20 October 2007
November 2007
Research phase at Greenwich Dance Agency & performance at GDA Cabaret on 9 November 2007
(Donatella Cabras & Gabriele Reuter with mentor Raquel Meseguer)
Final work-in-progress showing at Laban Centre on 29 November
(Donatella Cabras, Gabriele Reuter & Barret Hodgson)
February 2008
Four week-long research and production phase at fabrik Potsdam
(Donatella Cabras, Gabriele Reuter, Barret Hodgson & Martin Hargreaves)
April 2008
Premiere of “RELAY” at Greenwich Dance Agency, London
More info on the process:
www.relay-inprogress.blogspot.com
