SAMEN

CREDITS
CHOREOGRAPHER
Davide Terlingo
COMPOSER
Bernhard Loibner
DANCER
Angie Tsitrimpini

PREMIERE
14th September 2001
Porgy&Bess, Vienna

VISUALS

"Simple elements interacting with their environment can bring about the emergence of beautifully complex structures... not a linear series of events, rather a landscape of possibilities."

Samen is a choreographic landscape for variable number of dancers.

The work is conceived as a choreographic structure of an architectonic nature, wherein one or more dancers are given the opportunity to freely explore its geography. This is made possible by conceiving the elementary cells (seeds) - each representing a pre-choreographed dance sequence - as sections of an edifice - representing the ensemble of possible combinations. These sections are interconnected between them through a series of directional links (corridors), which allow and direct the passage from one dance sequence to the other. [Download model (.doc file)]

Being a landscape its structure will remain unaffected by the number of people contained within it, making it possible for a variable number of dancers to work at the same time with the same basic choreographic elements. The change will ultimately be in the nature of the final outcome and the amount of relations.

Samen possesses the qualities of an open system composed of possible space-time bodily configurations, rather than being script as a linear sequence of events. In each performance the dancer/s will freely reconfigure the succession of sequences, bringing to the audience a newly generated and original choreography; nevertheless they will also remain subject to the geography of this virtual construction and the nature of the choreographed material, elements expressing the creative influence of the choreographer.

It should also be noted that each section has being choreographed giving special emphasis to different parts of the body, meaning that these parts will in turn function as points used for the generation of movement. In this way, while the dancer moves within the choreographic landscape, the choreography moves within the dancer's body at an internal compositional level (bodily landscape).
On top, the addition of a dynamic landscape will describe the nature of certain choreographic elements - such as speed, acceleration, tempo - that will change according to a dynamic curve generated by the music score (live / electro-acoustic). Therefore each seed will also contain different possible dynamic interpretations.