by Ana Laura Lozza & Bárbara Hang

This text was commissioned by Gretchen Blegen for LIGHT PASSES, a publication that collects texts, images and conversations surrounding light and its varied presences across artistic practice, choreography, land, power and memory.

“So many times we have entered the theater and sat down in our seats longing for the initial blackout to lose ourselves in some seconds of vast darkness. Even though we very much cherish this moment of infinite possibilities, it was only in our last work that we made use of this theatrical effect for the first time.

The theater is filled with codes and conventions, sometimes these limitations are tangible and sometimes quite invisible. Lighting, often unwittingly, plays an important role in the practice of these norms and masters the dramaturgy of the whole theatrical event directing our attention. The best known of these dramaturgies begins by turning off the lights in the stalls in order to start the show, followed by the first lights illuminating the first actions. Darkness is used whenever something has to be concealed, as blackouts in between scenes separating or connecting them, or to announce the end of the performance.

For some years now we have been interested in light as matter for choreographic study. Last year we had the chance to make time and space to zoom in on the relation between light, darkness and vision. Situating our choreographic practices during the day and night and in different environments (a basement, a desert, a forest, a city), we explored ways of being and doing in the light and in the dark and tried to unsettle, from our perspective as sighted people, the references that shape reality with sight as the dominant sense for knowledge.

Upon receiving the invitation to reflect on our approach to light, we began by going through our work and collecting all those materials that were in dialogue, or in conflict with how light and darkness operates on the experience of bodies in the theater situation. By collecting, recalling, naming, singing along, moving words in space, putting them in relation, erasing and reassembling we were unexpectedly driven to Fade into rhythm... “


Listen to the text here (English)

Light passes

With contributions by Zwoisy Mears-Clarke and Emese Csornai, Ana Laura Lozza & Bárbara Hang, Bettina Malcomess, Kirbie Bennett and Jamie Wanzek.

Initiated and gathered by Gretchen Blegen.
Ed. Oriole Press and Gretchen Blegen, 2023
Berlin

Oriole Press

Consumation >

by Ana Laura Lozza & Bárbara Hang

This text was commissioned by Gretchen Blegen for LIGHT PASSES, a publication that collects texts, images and conversations surrounding light and its varied presences across artistic practice, choreography, land, power and memory.

“So many times we have entered the theater and sat down in our seats longing for the initial blackout to lose ourselves in some seconds of vast darkness. Even though we very much cherish this moment of infinite possibilities, it was only in our last work that we made use of this theatrical effect for the first time.

The theater is filled with codes and conventions, sometimes these limitations are tangible and sometimes quite invisible. Lighting, often unwittingly, plays an important role in the practice of these norms and masters the dramaturgy of the whole theatrical event directing our attention. The best known of these dramaturgies begins by turning off the lights in the stalls in order to start the show, followed by the first lights illuminating the first actions. Darkness is used whenever something has to be concealed, as blackouts in between scenes separating or connecting them, or to announce the end of the performance.

For some years now we have been interested in light as matter for choreographic study. Last year we had the chance to make time and space to zoom in on the relation between light, darkness and vision. Situating our choreographic practices during the day and night and in different environments (a basement, a desert, a forest, a city), we explored ways of being and doing in the light and in the dark and tried to unsettle, from our perspective as sighted people, the references that shape reality with sight as the dominant sense for knowledge.

Upon receiving the invitation to reflect on our approach to light, we began by going through our work and collecting all those materials that were in dialogue, or in conflict with how light and darkness operates on the experience of bodies in the theater situation. By collecting, recalling, naming, singing along, moving words in space, putting them in relation, erasing and reassembling we were unexpectedly driven to Fade into rhythm... “


Listen to the text here (English)

Light passes

With contributions by Zwoisy Mears-Clarke and Emese Csornai, Ana Laura Lozza & Bárbara Hang, Bettina Malcomess, Kirbie Bennett and Jamie Wanzek.

Initiated and gathered by Gretchen Blegen.
Ed. Oriole Press and Gretchen Blegen, 2023
Berlin

Oriole Press

Consumation >