silver

“My mother called me Silver. I was born part precious metal, part pirate.”*

what if silver is the color of dancing? what if dancing is nothing but a child, silver coated and unlawfully reproduced?
one hundred silver coats travel the space and perception shifts to imagination
walking watching carrying posing
no need to explain, no worry to succeed
only reckless rephrasing, and the thrill of paying attention

silver indulge the predilection for serial imagery, distorted and rearranged, ever so crucial to the work. and the overlapping of sentiment and rigor, it increasingly craves.

Choreography Cristina Caprioli, performers Anja Arnquist, Sophie Augot, Philip Berlin, Louise Dahl, Jim De Block, Marcus Doverud, Samuel Draper, Hana Erdman, Madeleine Lindh, Adam Schütt, Kristiina Viiala, and audiences, photography Dajana Lothert

*Opening line of the novel Lighthouse keeping by Jeanette Winterson

silver is ordered in two scenes:

the missing children
lowkey behind

the missing children

One hundred silver coats dress up audience and performers alike. Nothing happens, other than a few formations and otherwise tableau vivant. Most of the time the children are watching, or listening, not clear from where or to what. Sometimes they pretend to be a school of fish, singing a mute song. Other times the coats take over the plot, spread over the floor, pile up in a heap. Carried, and concealed.

Meanwhile, two misfits from elsewhere perform a duet they do not recognize. Frogs in a pond, two of the same, or perhaps cyborgs, cables hanging outside, they dance a finely tuned double dance. We don’t get it but see it and cannot not be moved.

The duet is entitled at tatt2.22 and is a replica of att att (2012), a piece which was dealing with speech-machines and the incommensurable, two rather critical issues, which from then on came to sustain all further projects and pieces, not to mention methodologies and agencies.

lowkey behind

Silver coats turn into slow images – hollow, homeless and with no claims. Less than nothing happens, other than the slight bending of your perception. Ghost, thing, corpse, carcass, each shape is ready to sweep you off your feet. The child is no longer a child, the coat no longer a coat. We circle around the fire, wait for a faint call from behind.

And whilst you tune in, two unannounced figures place themselves apart and begin to overlap. Limbs, faces, organs out of tune, they fit into each other’s voids, and trespass each other’s territories. It is hard to grasp what they want, and yet they seem to mean something, moving as they do, with such urgency, such diligence, and so subtle.

Jump-cuts and closeups, scratching and fade-outs, more than anything, they seem to be editing themselves, and by that also our understanding.
Quietly, in earnest, they force us to take on the non-linear.

The duet is an excerpt from the piece Avtäckning (2009), which focused on distortion blurred each move into several images, in turn re-editing themselves into new footage. Dead serious, absurd, ironic, the piece allowed dancing to disregard continuity, or common sense for that matter. For the sake of a twisted outcome, digitally achieved. As such, fully coherent to the films of collaborator artist Mateusz Herczka, whose visual framing of the piece was analogue footage rephrased by algorithmic montage. lowkey behind ends with such a film, overlapped to baroque music. From the grey shades of silver to an overload of color. From the void of silver to the overload of sentiment of Jean-Philip Rameau. Shredded footage and heartbreaking music in a twist. Non-linear imagery as the final embrace.