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Phi
Dance Performance, 2016
Phi
Dance Performance, 2016
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Phi is the latest audio/visual/interactive dance performance installation created by the Berlin-based collective, StratoFyzika in collaboration with the Lisbon-based choreographer, Daria Kaufman. Inspired by the slowly changing, repetitive structure of minimalist music, two dancers phase in and out of unison using loops and variations of choreographies from specific body parts. Using interactive sensors to track and respond to their movements, a light motion system alternately reveals and obscures their bodies while a spatial sound pool creates overlapping, electronic soundscapes. The result is a striking, visceral performance that challenges audience perceptions of the body, space and time.
Daria Kaufman and Hen Ni Hen / Choreography and movement
Alessandra AiKia Werkstatt / Light design
Akkamiau Kočičí / Quadraphonic sound
Phi is the latest audio/visual/interactive dance performance installation created by the Berlin-based collective, StratoFyzika in collaboration with the Lisbon-based choreographer, Daria Kaufman. Inspired by the slowly changing, repetitive structure of minimalist music, two dancers phase in and out of unison using loops and variations of choreographies from specific body parts. Using interactive sensors to track and respond to their movements, a light motion system alternately reveals and obscures their bodies while a spatial sound pool creates overlapping, electronic soundscapes. The result is a striking, visceral performance that challenges audience perceptions of the body, space and time.
Daria Kaufman and Hen Ni Hen / Choreography and movement
Alessandra AiKia Werkstatt / Light design
Akkamiau Kočičí / Quadraphonic sound
Φ is currently a work in progress, that has been until now developed over the following residencies:
Cultivamos Cultura in São Luis (PT) - May 2016
Dance/Tech residency, sponsored by Troika Tronix, at Lake Studios Berlin - July 2016
ATALAIA ARTES PERFORMATIVAS - June 2017
Performed on 28th and 29th July 2016 at UferStudios Berlin and during Atalaia Artes Performativas Festival in Aljustrel
Cultivamos Cultura in São Luis (PT) - May 2016
Dance/Tech residency, sponsored by Troika Tronix, at Lake Studios Berlin - July 2016
ATALAIA ARTES PERFORMATIVAS - June 2017
Performed on 28th and 29th July 2016 at UferStudios Berlin and during Atalaia Artes Performativas Festival in Aljustrel
Using motion sensors and Isadora software, Alessandra Leone (Lighting Designer) and Thomas Van Ta (Creative Coder) have programmed two light projectors in correspondence with the dancers' movements, highlighting different angles and trajectories that distort and deconstruct the body. In one section, as the dancers travel down a narrow, diagonal beam of light and continually flip from their stomachs to their backs, the light flips with them – with each rotation, two opposing beamers switch on and off, causing the dancers' shadows and illuminated areas to continually shift. The effect is kinetic and paradoxical, as if simultaneously experiencing two different perspectives of the same moment.
Two dancers - Hen Lovely Bird and Daria Kaufman – created and perform the choreography. In their process, they focused on composing clear, sharp, isolated movements with a distinct rhythm or timing, and then juxtaposing these phrases into a kind of clock, where each of performer acts individually, constantly shifting in and out of unison. This compositional structure, known as phasing, is woven throughout the piece's movement, lighting, and sound design, and it creates the effect of constant oscillation between synchrony and dissonance, harmony and chaos.
The choreography also explores ways in which small, isolated movements can recontextualize the body. For instance, at one point, the performers sit with their legs spread wide on the floor and just slightly bend and straighten their knees while the torso, in darkness, slants forward and remains totally still. With each tiny bend of the knee, a low positioned floor light peaks through, giving the impression that the legs are moving creatures independent from their torsoes, or perhaps talking limbs in conversation with the light.
Audio composer Lenka Kočišová has designed a sound pool using four speakers/channels positioned in different corners of the audience. As viewers sit, they experience the sound travelling through space, creating overlapping atmospheres of electronic rhythms and tones. In this sense, the architecture of the room becomes a felt, sonic experience.
All of these elements combine to make Phi a striking, thought-provoking, visceral performance which challenges and re-defines the viewer's perception of body, space, and sound.
Keywords for the lighting work are
distance
Depth
density
gravity
time shift
Movement
libration
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dissolve
retract
expand
overlap
The lighting transforms the stage during the entire performance into an architectural machine . Four stage lights are positioned at the 4 highest corners of the stage, while two projectors are on the ground along two opposite sides of that same square. Playing with the different nature of PAR cans lights and projection, we aim to find interesting ways to reveal the bodies and tell their movement .
From the very beginning of our work on Phi, lighting sound and movement have been developed in parallel. This kind of workflow has been very satisfying in the way every small progress in one of the fields inspires unexpected approaches to the other two.
One of the very first ideas was using quick flashes to highlight small portions of the bodies. This way we could reconstruct the choreography by showing/hiding, putting together small chunks of the original movement and giving it another shape. We could easily notice, during these tests, how the body transformed into a composition of many other bodies while being sculpted and dissolved.
The flashing, coming from different directions, was particularly disorienting when seen from the static point of view of the audience and these body chunks, once immersed into that specific space/time environment, were opening up to new possibilities and interpretations.
When we met again at Cultivamos Cultura (Sao Luis, Portugal) for the first residency, watching an updated version of the choreography where the different materials were coming together in the shape of real sections inspired me to push this flashing idea further. As the simple body movements were chasing each other in repetition and variation, the lighting score could lose its spatial randomness and start following a circular path ( the one of a loop ). This way the stage became a rotating reference frame in which the perception of said repetitiveness could be distorted by speeding up and down this visual looping reference clock.
4 lights at the 4 edges, fading in and out one after the other, as to give a key to read the inner repetition happening in the movement. As your perception of the motion of a train changes if you are you sitting on another train moving in parallel to the first one.
The idea of having an audience on two sides came when we were brainstorming about lighting positions in relationship to choreographic pathways. As we noticed it could be interesting offering two simultaneous points of view, the movement was redistributed in the space according to that, and we added to the set-up two projectors pointing towards the center of the stage from opposite sides .
The use of projectors makes it possible to work at higher speeds, and the character of their light beam, combined with a fog machine, is able to fill the space with solid dense physical light. The space surrounding the stage disappears in the dark. While the dancers move through it, they pierce that material and phase in and out with a backlight - frontlight repetition game .This particular lighting suddenly brings the audience way closer to the performers, creating a much more intimate environment.
For this piece we decided to win some time using already-assembled sensors systems by x-io technologies, rather than starting from scratch and design our own as we did in the past.
The two sensing units, one for each dancer, are equipped with accelerometer, gyroscope and magnetometer. We are currently experimenting with calculations between these data to be able to extract interesting values to be used to control properties of light and sound. An interesting approach could be calculating difference values between the two body movements, to be able to highlight the phasing out that gradually happens after a unison.
