Seismos [ dance-film ] World Premiere: Athletes of the Imagination programme - The Body Festival of Dance and Physical Theatre 2006; Otago Festival of the Arts 2006; Tempo Festival of Dance 2006, New Zealand; Finalist in the VideoDansa, Barcelona Prize 2007, IDN Festival Barcelona, Spain. Programmed for Choreographing the Screen at The New Zealand Film Archive 2008, Wellington, New Zealand."Siesmos was designed to work as an opposite to Soma Songs, and aimed to balance the masculine drive of its predecessor with a feminine, rounded energy. When you set up a curve, you set up a rhythm, and again, this is about movement. The curve signals rotation. There is more length on the curved surface than a flat surface which therefore implies accelerated movement. Having begun with gravity defying dance over and through bending lines and geometric forms, the film and its performers finally return to a gravity bound surface and reconnect with the land: the iconic coastal boulders at Moeraki, Te Wai Pounamu, New Zealand.The word ‘seismos’ in the Greek language relates to earth tremor and movement of earth plates. The human body quakes in dance and gesture. Soma in Greek means body. The choice to adopt this terminology stems from research made in 2003 in which Classical Greek Architecture was studied in Athens, and the ideas and ideology of the early Modern Dance pioneers examined. The dance can be defined in terms of how we draw, shape and imprint our journeys on the world around us. Our hands are like miniature maps. Like maps of the world everything changes with time. The palm of our hand accumulates, stores and transmits. The lines are rivers of energy. The choreography and sound for this project can be seen as emerging like an archaeological excavation, and as a process of finding and uncovering. Each section of the film completes itself with a tableaux. The intention is to convey a kind of unwrapping in this process. This can be related to the post modern concept of unpacking: going back into the object or its story and seeing it as the product of situations in culture.Siesmos attempts to reveal the human spirit in a new take on physicality. This is truly ‘augmented dance’, where the choreography pulls its own phrases apart, and then rebuilds in new variation. The film shifts from flat space, to pursuing the idea that there is time inside space as well. Here the fabric of existence is seen as malleable. There is pulse in form; a natural geometry underlying all that moves.Prehistory refers to the period of human history before the invention of writing and recorded memory. The caves in Europe and New Zealand in which we find paintings, drawings, and engravings define discreet spaces - each has volume. Within the limits of reach and touch defined by these paintings - what we have to imagine is the act of making the drawings happen. We are left asking how much did intent become structured into ritual? ‘The gesture of drawing is in essence a projection of the body, and especially when viewing a drawing of the human figure we are reminded of that’ Merleau Ponty (1964). In Seismos the process of film is used not to record but to create. The film is an exploration of the human body as it quakes and tremors in dance and gesture. The choreography and sound emerge like an archaeological excavation, and as a process of finding and uncovering. Seismos makes a shift from the conceptual to the natural"Daniel Belton directors notes [c] 2006
You need to be a member of dance-tech to add comments!
Comments