This year, we began to work on a new evening-long piece. We will be presenting showings as we go along.
We all do thousands of things every day. Now imagine if we all did the _same_ thousand things...
- a ballet with audience participation in six acts with audience participation
Imagine you are from another planet, visiting earth for the first time. You would see people everywhere, busy with... what exactly? The reasons for their actions would make little sense to you. This piece is a study in human behavior, not in terms of intentions or desires, but rather for the acts themselves -- walking, gesturing, touching, talking. Seen as a collection of artifacts, our activities assume a new meaning.
There are six parts: 1000 calls, 1000 steps, 1000 gestures, 1000 touches, 1000 breaths, 1000 things. They are among the simplest, most ordinary and ineluctable aspects of life. In a sense, they are what unites us.
One thousand is not a magic number. It is big enough to talk about accumulation and multiplicity, yet small enough that, with a fair amount of practice, it can be mastered. This is our dance. The title not not figurative, it is literal! ‘1000gestures’, for example, means that each dancer must do 1000 different gestures in 15 minutes. This comes out to 0.9 seconds per gesture, and each must be perfect or the whole machine will fall apart. As is Palindrome's tradition, the piece uses interactive technology. In '1000touches', for example, the dancers wear special bracelets so when they touch, the physical contact between them is audible to the audience. Each dancer’s body transmits a different radio frequency, so when they touch, each is a different musical instrument. Excerpts can be seen 2018-19. Premiere in 2020.
Choreography: Robert Wechsler
Music: Andreas Bergsland
Assistant Choreographer: Delphine Lavau
Stage Design: Ekmel Ertan
Interactive Technology: Frieder Weiss
Dancers (subject to change) : Vanessa Cokaric, Taylor Drury, Dario Gaglia, Camille Jackson, Hannah Levine, Sarah Stanley, Tiziano Portas, Aika Tsuchida, Takayoshi Tsuchida, Po-Nien Wang
Premiere: Berlin, 2020.