photos by Julieta Cervantes
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Lichtung / Clearing
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2010
Liz Gerring Dance Company
in collaboration with Ursula Scherrer, video
Michael J. Schumacher, multi-channel sound
Premiered at Baryshnikov Arts Center, NYC, March 11-14, 2010
“a collaborative visual/sound/movement environment - 3 elements in 3 dimensions”
Cinematic in proportions, movement is enveloped in video and sound. For seven dancers including the choreographer.
Link to video and photos.
Liz Gerring: “We’re attempting to create an environment in which meaning is derived from the image not the story. Non-narrative movement is deepened by the other media, each following a parallel trajectory or tangent, allowing ‘story’ to exist independently for each member of the audience.”
Ursula Scherrer: “‘Die Lichtung’ is German for clearing. ‘Das Licht’ is ‘the light’. For me, in a way, every piece is a kind of a clearing. We take something out of a greater context, out of our vision, be it in sounds, images or movements and share that with the audience.”
Michael Schumacher: “The musical composition is diffused through a 6-speaker sound system placed around the room. The piece is a collage of field recordings, musique concrete and the composer playing guitar. A prominent sound is a set of recordings of the dancers’ footsteps, recorded during rehearsals. Text is also featured, from the Disintegrating Language group active in Britain in the 60s, and by Ursula Scherrer, read in German.”
You watch “Lichtung/Clearing” much as you do Cunningham’s “RainForest” (1968): a drama where the feral, the primitive and the civilized all interconnect... “Lichtung/ Clearing”, which I recall as both psychodrama and zoological reportage, is a major achievement.
Alastair Macaulay, New York Times, March 2010
original dancers: