You enter a room ... how do you get your bearings? Some-one says why dont you sit down? But wheres the best place? Whats happening? Does it make a difference to the way you think, the way you behave, if the room is in a house? a meeting hall? a theatre?
The award-winning Portuguese choreographer Rui Horta has, in recent pieces, been exploring the relationship we have, as spectators, with theatrical spaces. How that particular context conditions our perceptions of what occurs there. And what might just happen if our habits and expectations are unexpectedly tweaked, subverted.
SETUP is the latest part of this ongoing research and has, as its main theme, considerations of communication and intimacy that go right to the heart of how we see others friends and strangers, not just performers and how we, too, present ourselves. Especially if we think we are being watched.
Horta, whose visually dramatic, thrillingly visceral work has previously been seen in the repertoire of Scottish Dance Theatre, is one of those rare choreographers who tunes in to how our bodies speak: not in words, but through the give-away details of seemingly involuntary gestures. Touch, or the absence of it... Eye contact that cannot hold, but slides off even as the text-dialogue is sounding chirpy, sincere, connected. Agreeing does not mean communicating and disagreeing is freqently a more intimate act.
SETUP delves vigorously, wittily, into a game of proximities where, as part of the performance, were invited to define or maybe redefine what we regard as the boundaries of theatre-space. Are audiences players too? So sit back, and allow SETUP to take you to a place for reflection, transgression and doubt there the core of the theatrical experience lies.
Oh and by the way The chair is broken, but you can still sit on it. Rui Horta.
SETUP is co-produced by: O Espao do Tempo/Festival Temps dImages/TRAFO House of Contemporary Arts/Centro Cultural de Belm/Tanzhaus NRW, Festival Danse Aix, Faro Capital de Cultura, Dupla Scena /Chateau Rouge, Annemasse/ReggioParmaFestival/ReggioEmiliaDanza.
With the support of: Cmara Municipal de Montemor-o-Novo, Instituto Camoes, Gulbenkian Foundation.