Sunday, May 21, 2017

Flying Together ! Labodanse@Palais de la Découverte




"sun...ergie"

Paris, May21 20172:30AM




We enter a round darkened space with a small group of seats in the middle. A "coach" , Matthieu Gaudeau with encouragment and laughter, gets our huge group moving in unison( felt like a 100 but maybe 50 ?) We circle the space in the dark, hand on the person in front of us. At first slowly moving, then gain some momentum. We switch directions. Having been a follower we are now leading someone behind us. We stop and turn to face the center of the room. Our coach asks us to toss an imaginary object to those on the opposite side who catch it and toss it back. Back and forth. Back and forth.

We are now one organism in this space. We take our places in the center of the room.

There is a lovely bird like image made up of points of light on a screen in front of us. Several people stand and sit down. First the left side then the right. And we figure out that we are moving the left and right wings with our mouvement. We try more fluid action like you see crowds doing in a stadium wave. This takes some practice! A large bird flys into view

We suddently understand that we are "flying" the bird ! Somewhat clumsily at first, but with better and better coordination as we all get into it. We fly!

In fact this "stimergy" seems to work best when one is aware of the partner on either side of you while orienting yourself to the image ahead.

A kind of a chaotic mass starts to appear and expand in front of our flying bird. Like magnetic particles separating into opposite poles. We learn that this image is created by our clapping together or using our voices in unison. I wasn't sure which.

So we are both flying the bird and creating the environment in front of the bird.

Two artists : quietSpeaker (Andrea Mancianti, Roberto Pugliese ) had been working with our movements to make the surrounding soundscape.

Mindboggling how this all came together.Altho there obviously was quite complicated technology involved, it disappeared and was at the service of the overall experience !

Oh it was over way too soon ! Everyone has an astonished look on their face as we filed out. Even Mattieu ! When I ask him if he had done this before he said no it was the first time for them too !

One thing that comes to mind is just how different this is from an oculus rift kind of experience where one is lost in ones own singularity.

There we were. Out in the world, working as one, flying as one. Just fantastic.

And that was but one of our experiences last night !

"Dreamers" the other installation was another thing all together !

Took me hours to ride home as I got lost once with so much adrenalin running around ! Paris looked like another planet last night !

Pop would have loved every second.

Labodanse@Palais de la Découverte

Thank you to Labodanse : Asaf Bachrach w/ his incredible team of artists for inviting me

Please check out their website that I have linked in up there. It is in french but I think we all know how to use the translation options these days don't we?

- Lissa

off to work on her Pop job with this new energy and inspiration. CAVS 50th Celebration Flying Red Line proposal here we come !