DANCE 2019 Interview
Your Art is Your Body!
Vom 16. bis zum 26. Mai bietet das DANCE Festival allen Tanz-Begeisterten MünchnerInnen eine Chance, in die facettenreiche Welt des internationalen Tanzes einzutauchen. Mit dabei: Der kanadische Choreograf/Tänzer Peter Trosztmer und der Komponist Zack Settel. Zusammen haben sie die Performance „BetweenTheDotsBeta“ konzipiert. Hier trifft Tanz auf Augmented Reality. M94.5 hat das Team zum Interview getroffen.
Dance -What’s it all about? What is special about dancing compared to other forms of expression?
Peter: I think that, kind of what’s special about dance, is that it’s almost as poor as being a poet. Aside from this it involves the body, I think. Your art is your body, or the body of the people that your working with. It’s very interesting. It can be very personal. It can also be kind of alienating in some ways because your body becomes a tool and it’s part of the expression of the art: you kind of loose posession of yourself.
What does dance mean to you personally?
Peter: It’s funny: I think I’ve become Dance in so many ways. I’ve just been doing this for so long. I feel like everything I do is rooted from choreography or from dance – So when I ride my bycicle I feel like I’m dancing, when I walk I feel like I’m dancing, when I’m painting the house I feel like I’m dancing and then when I’m dancing I feel like I’m just being me.
I think you can try to walk away from it but I don’t know if it will ever leave you.
Is it something for everybody? Is dance IN everybody?
Peter: Dance is definitely in everybody. We have just stepped away from it as a culture in a way – that’s sort of sad. I think dance…one of its amazing things is: it brings hope back to bring the body back into our perspective. This is big, especially now, when we’re getting more and more into our telephones and computers. Dance is essential: For our piece of mind, for our well-being; just in society as a whole, for people to have a body language, that they understand as a community, that goes way deeper than conversation or tone.
“Dance … a big thick grey line, that brings us closer to our bodys.”
Peter Trosztmer
Dance also plays a role in connecting people and participation. The DANCE Festival calls you a specialist of the participatory. Why is the element of participation important within your work?
Peter: Participation is a tricky word. What I feel like more, is that I like to bring the dance out of people or make us dance. I don’t feel like it neccesarily needs an active role. You don’t need to step in and decide, you’re gonna participate. Just being present or just thinking about it or just talking about already starts this proccess of dancing. This approach is what I’m very much interested in. Sort of a grey line, a big thick grey line that brings us closer to our bodys. Participation is the part in it where I just like this activation of the dancer within all of us.
What does BetweentheDotsBeta look like?
Zack: You download the app and you walk into the space. You and nineteen other people are waiting for the experience to begin. You have a pair of headphones on and you have a big empty space, that initially has nothing in it. Soon enough there is gonna be Peter (dancing) and all kinds of visual and audio things that you can see and hear, using your phone.
Why did you choose to implement augmented reality?
Zack: The thing that augmented reality allows us to do from a musical point of view is, it allows us to experience music in a very unusual and mostly brand new way, because it allows you to have a very intimate and close relationship with the sources of the music. A quick little example would be: if you wrote a piece for orchestra and you allow the audience to walk through the orchestra while the piece is playing. That’s a very very different sonic experience, than the one that you’re having, while you’re sitting twenty meters away, where you’ve paid the most money to have the best seats. Because of the way AR works, you can walk into a space and have a handful of sound sources that are playing and each part is to a certain extend autonomous. You can listen to it all by itself, but if you listen to the neighbouring instruments there’s kind of a sense there. You can also listen to the far-away instruments and there’s a sense to them as well. So it’s this idea that you can compose music in more of a non linear, more spacial sense.
Is this also what you want me as a visitor to take away from this?
Peter: Certainly a sense of agency. A certain sense of being able to create your own experience. Weirdly enough, a sense of community, of coming together and being together and having your input have an affectation. So there’s a back and forth that happens.
Zack: Discovery and surprise.
BetweenTheDotsBeta ist auf dem DANCE Festival vom 22.-26. Mai jeden Tag zu erleben.
