A seven voices fugue in Esher's and Borge's Labirynth
Tim Rescala e Simone Michelin | Oi Futuro, Rio de Janeiro
“This performance, created exclusively for this space, is based on its physical structure, where a staircase drives the visitor to different and unusual universes in each reached level.” Moreover its sound structure is a fugue, a musical form in which a theme is first stated, then repeated and varied with contrapuntal lines. As the title reveals, its dorsal spine intermingles Borges and Escher’s imaginaries regarding space, time and human perception.
“In this performance that has two well distinct parts, seven artists, including four musicians, an actor, a dancer and a sculptor, found themselves in a search.” Making Aleph’s character inverse way to the one of the story, they go up stairs, executing a fugue and orienting themselves through seven pages of a common score in which there are specific signs for each interpreter. “The performance is an improvisation guided by a series of seven notes.” Each interpreter keeps on repeating the trajectory circa 35 min in the first part of the spectacle.
“The performance of the artists, sounds and images, is captured in real time by microphones and cameras. This material is re-processed and exhibited inside the theater in the second part of the spectacle, assuming new forms and new directions. It becomes then the sum of all the events, the total concurrence and convergence, the point where all the points converge, where everything is seen - the Aleph.” (Tim Rescala)
The visual project took as starting point some studies from Escher’s well known images-architecture. The spectrum of colors and luminosity ranged from white to black, from light to darkness. The score was spacialized around the stairs; from level 1 to 5, static printed backgrounds marked the labirynth spaces and in the last two levels video projections turned the ambience blue, leading to the theater dark room. The white light, rough and dramatic, on the background panels and on the tranparency of the staircase multiply the space highlighting people, public and performers, in it. The visual ambience of the performance pursued, besides its almost expressionist pathos, a feeling of lightness, fluidity, simoultaneity, multiplicity and transparency as characteristics of that event. On the other hand, I looked for the creation of quite distinct moments in the spectacle two parts that could underline the presence of the body, mine and others, at the first moment and its detachment and transformation in image-light and sound in the second part. (Simone Michelin)
