What follows is a phenomenological description (Simon Rose) of the performance of Space interspersed with reflections from the dancers and audience members.

 

‘From the beginning, I felt a certain rootedness in the concreteness of my own body, which arose from the attention I was given by the performers - to themselves, the space, and the spectators...’ Audience member (1).

 

Barbara Berti is semi-recumbent on the floor of the empty performance space. She seems to absorb the sense given off by members of the audience as they enter choosing seats that are situated on two sides. Meanwhile, Rocio Marano crosses the performance space reflecting with her right arm the direction the audience are walking and Paolo Rosini faces the incoming audience, noticing and observing individuals. All three move through the space, at times halting, still directing attention to the audience who in turn watch while finding their seats. Who is watching who? A slow beat is playing that sets a hypnotic tone, as the dancers’ attitude, actions and interactions with audience form an introduction to Space’s principle theme of attention. Attuning to the audience and space through bodily presence the three dancers operate in a unified practice, separate yet together in attending to the particularity of the audience on this particular day.

 

‘… your show put me in a state of attention like never before.’ Audience member (2).

 

‘… the relationship you sought out and established with the audience, like a feeling of warmth and expansion in being accompanied during the viewing.’

 

Audience member (3) As the music ends there is a drop, the sonic space is now silent, we are no longer soothed by the sound, attention goes deeper, becoming more attuned to what is already there, and a slight shift occurs as dancers move their attention inward. Movement occurs as necessity, as attention shifts - this is the practice. At times a precise synchronisation occurs between dancers, arising with the air of chance, often between two with a third as satellite, at other times between all three. Rocio speaks: language birthed by the moment of attention, emerging as part stream of consciousness, part reflections in the moment. ‘The heart, the pumping energy… It can be broken …It’s just an image we build … is it in the body? Or is it in the language? …’.

 

‘My awareness of how I give attention has become emphasized. I feel a relation to language and the articulation of feelings that is more direct and strong - it can also be poetic and deep. I experienced a trusting in this unconscious place where language is coming from and to value and respect this information. That’s very empowering. To honor that wisdom I have found to be an important step.’ Rocio Morano (company dancer).

 

Through the stream of creative asymmetry of three, questions of when to follow the other and when to continue roll out, forming a momentum of their own. Barbara’s voice joins the sound world: reflection as fleeting commentary, that can also be a provocation, humorous - in one serene moment, with a smile: ‘I almost now want to wreck it’. It’s a precise practice – through attention pointing to what is there through a sensorial drawing out of bodily presence and movement. Inherently challenging audience expectations, this dance practice of attention foregrounds the psychological:- Barbara: ‘Attention can project’. The language expands thematically to broader themes. Movement’s presence forms a question about attention that can surface in language and so the here-and-now is also tied to existential questions: ‘… world, keep turning. Is it going to change, the image that we project? Or is it too simple? Like dying. We don’t talk about these things. No? We spoiled everything. Destroyed. It was so nice for a moment …’ This is not comfortable – ‘it’s better you don’t ask a neighbour – they don’t know’. So, the practice is a connecting of performers and audience through the moment via attention; creating micro-narratives through bodily presence and the vocalising of emergent thoughts, leading to connections to broader existential, universal, and environmental themes and concerns.

 

‘I discovered my attention wasn’t the problem but my surroundings were… All my life I have been directed to a broken circuit that stopped my attention really benefiting myself in a way that I can feel great about what I am, what I do, what I say and what I value’. Audience member 2.

 

This problematizes the presentation of a technique based dance for its own sake but, rather, presents a performance process devised to include audience in dialogical presence via embodied presence and language. Paolo’s voice enters the field of sound and a further enigmatic side to the performance emerges, each of the dancer’s subjectivities offering a differing perspective on the present, the event that is being constructed through creation by the embodied examination of itself. Complexity arises as three voices speak, a collage of thoughts, ideas, reflections and commentary. Within the commentary reflexivity allows for the complexity of the unfolding process – ‘Was this [movement] too soon?’ but this also carries humour – ‘Don’t take it too seriously’. The provocation of the process may lead to emotional reactions: ‘… if you’re angry, that’s OK.’ A shared sequence between Barbara and Paolo employing close contact brings a new, dynamic intimacy as commentary and bodily presence, in contact through holding, sharing weight, in flowing movement is the new medium of reflective exchange.

 

Still talking, Barbara leaves the performance area and goes out of view behind the audience, until barely audible. And our attention goes to Rocio who lies prone now wearing a clear plastic coat and with swimming motions moving large sheets of plastic on the floor that create a prism of reflected light upon the wall behind as electronic sound now occupies the sound-field.

 

‘… you flooded the whole scene and us, the audience, with color and energy.’ Audience member (3)

 

The form is changed: the questions and ideas arising from attention, bodies, and words still hang in the air and become transmogrified through coloured light and the sound of electronics, emphasising the visual and aural. This evocation of technology and science fiction suggests both alien presence and cult-like ritual. Barbara joins, mirroring Rocio’s movement with a second large plastic sheet through which light projects its own dance on the wall behind. The effect of the light and plastic avoid the slickness more commonly associated with special effects. Instead, light and sound carry a do-it-yourself feeling that is in keeping with the more home-grown, unscripted language, and movement as outcome of attention that reflect Space’s overarching focus: presence, attention, responsiveness and inclusion. Like the earlier reflexive commentary that deconstructed the moment, this offers insight into the nature of the present. As the two dancers shape the plastic sheets this changes the light’s formations – prism effects, at times like the aurora borealis - evoking the natural and technological worlds simultaneously resonating with the previous ecological aspect of the commentary: ‘… We don’t talk about these things? No? We spoiled everything. Destroyed. It was so nice for a moment …’

 

‘It has been a non-linear progression of breaking limitations. Breaking down walls. The borders of private and public, the inside and outside melt down. A constant moving of the emotions. Empty space in which to contemplate. Time. A place of being. Places for the mind and the one of the body.’ Paolo Rosini (company dancer).

 

The electronic music’s end brings another transformation – Barbara and Rocio face each other both holding a single plastic sheet and rock back and forth while the sheet sounds, a mesmerised refocussing of embodied presence that simultaneously creates a new shadow play behind – (somewhat reminiscent of the Great Crested Grebe’s courtship ‘dance’). More urgent electronic sounds play as the two extend this rocking back to back, seated and both turning and gazing, in synchronised movement – part epileptic, part Dervish, part children in spontaneous play flinging bodies and limbs for joy. And, as with the Dervish’s simple repetitious spinning, a sense of duration is part of the event, and of increasing drama as the movement becomes more frenzied. As the high-energy sequence subsides it leaves a still-point of calm in its wake that gives way to a new space. From the comparative stillness, resting in close contact, recovering breathing, Barbara once more directs attention towards the audience while Rocio remains prone, eyes closed, attention inward. From a final embrace that is sensual Paolo joins and carefully attaches creating a three headed being, and another rhythmic shift has occurred – his body’s placement now forms a pile of bodies, the tightness of the grouping in constraint, a mass of great resistance. And a group commentary describes the difficulty, the struggle, and it becomes humorous. Heads between legs, unable to produce independent movement, constraint upon constraint, three can only move as one. ‘Why is it so difficult today?’ Again, the emerging language is a response to what is actually perceived rather than stymied by the creation of the pre-planned ‘set piece’.

 

‘The unknown, unpredictable actions can lead you into unexpected places and states of being.’ Paolo Rosini (company dancer).

 

The three-headed being dissolves as a slow beat begins and, now separated, Rocio raps into a microphone and words are projected upon the rear wall. The lyrics ask us to question who we are: ‘I’m not just a body on stage, you’re not just an audience sitting’, to not be limited by the image we have of ourselves.

 

‘… a change of mood, from a feeling of recollection, of reflection, almost intimate, to a party that breaks out in a contagious way, and that desire to talk, to communicate, to put into words the experience that was at first more reserved.’ Audience member (3)

 

We are invited to reimagine ourselves ‘like in a Golden Dream’, to reconsider what we are really paying attention to and redirect our imagination towards more utopian possibilities, away from the unconsidered, habituated ways of giving attention. The track gives way to a second more upbeat one and Barbara immediately takes up from where Rocio left off – exploring the same theme of attention and the construction of who we are, by a different route: ‘ .. a memory way back when there was childhood, … where everything was like an instruction and everybody will tell you: Yes, do this, it’s the right way to be’. As the smoke machine starts up all three are interacting on microphones, it becomes a playful invitation for the audience to explicitly take on the questioning of attention, to participate, and three chairs are placed in the middle of the space.

 

‘Even though I didn't move, I was moved. The potential of breaking a limitation was activated, the energy accumulated and I could carry it with me outside onto the street.’ Audience member 3

 

There’s an abrupt ending, a silence as the three leave the performance space and Barbara directly asks the audience if they can accept the questions that Space has formed. The smoke machine goes up a gear and there is a surreal sense of space waiting for something to happen. ‘Is there not a chosen one in the room?’ After some time, in masks, three audience members occupy the seats. After a pause, the three take one another’s hands, moving together, clearly inspired by aspects of the performance. But this is a different little drama, with playful wariness. Space’s ending continues to incontrovertibly question the performer/audience dynamic and relationship. The space that is created at the end is not one of comfort, or certainty, rather it remains uncomfortably true to the piece’s purpose – to insist that we re-examine ideas of why and how we are giving attention and to imagine the possibilities that lead from there.

 

‘Where is my attention? Breath. What's this feeling? Where did it come from? Is it real? Is it self-produced in the process? The feelings are real. But, what is reality in this process? Where is our ‘essence’ beyond our identity. Let it go… You can find everything you need in the present, in the space that constantly offers new input’. Paolo Rosini (company dancer)