Eyes fluttering in Kneecaps
2007 | Multimedia theater and interactive Butoh dance piece
Eyes Fluttering in Kneecaps (Laboratory of Stage Arts with Marco Donnarumma, Modris Tenisons, Voldemars Johansons, Liga Stibe, Viktors Jansons, Skaidra Jancaite, 2007). Two human beings, naked spirit against costumed and stereotyped mind. Two different stories through sound, voice, acoustic space and movement.
White pigeon in a red pearl thread.
Three a la Ruben’s woman.
Levels of history, arts and humanity of Baltic area.
Human’s spirit and body metamorphosis.
The secret of conception.
The secret of birth.
The secret of life.
The secret of death.
In 2007 the Laboratory of Stage Arts (Latvia) commissioned the design of an interactive mixed-media scenery for the project “Eyes fluttering in Kneecaps” – an experimental theater piece exploring the concepts of erased body, Occupancy and Death as heritage of the Butoh dance philosophy.
The commission included the development of an audiovisual interactive system used by the dancers and the soprano to generate the soundscape and video scenery for the piece through the use of their voices and movements.
A trailer of the piece can be viewed at blip.tv.
Below you can listen to an excerpt from live performance. A motion reactive system manipulates recorded samples of the dancers voices and other pre-recorded material. Field recording, programming and live electronics by the author.
Mutation#1 by Marco Donnarumma
Project Keywords
Butoh, butoh dance, butoh philosophy, life, death, body, sex; sound objects, soprano, electroacoustic, drone, ambient, metal sheet, sampling; experimental theather, theather, dance, performance, real-time physical interaction, audiovisual real-time processing; augmented body, voice recognition, physical computing, pure data.
Selected performances
- Pedvale Open Air National Museum, Seasonal closing ceremony, Pedvale, Latvia, November 2007
- Latvian College of Culture, Riga, Latvia, October 2007