Quiet Storms is a stubborn attempt to make the invisible present. It is a clumsy nostalgic dance. An impossible song. An irreverent, hypnotic trip. A process of erosion. An open wound. The work began as an exploration of Nahuel’s native land, Patagonia – of a territory amid endless cycles of violence, memories of a distant landscape, and parts of a family history that have been hidden, denied. Oil, conquest, violence, desertion. Inspired by a practice of listening to both ancestral resonances and his constantly being out of place, Nahuel has built an opening to affect, vulnerability, and to the echoes of catastrophe.
Like a sensitive revolt, Quiet Storms offers visions against the suffocating realism that dominates the gaze on the painful. Like an intimate ceremony to summon what has been buried, it tells a story about other possible worlds. It is a performance, an experience, a gathering of sensual impressions, which, through constantly changing our perceptions of body and space, invites us to re-imagine how – and with what or whom – we come together.
Text from Chapter 3 DAS Theatre Master Presentations
The light design aimed to create an unstable space, one that is in a continued state of becoming. I focused on activating the peripheral vision of the audience, enfolding them in the movement of the space. Peripheral vision evokes the visceral level of perception, referring to unconscious or emotional reactions that are more instinctive in nature. I created a series of loops based on movements in nature, breathing, rolling clouds, a storm approaching… running these loops and letting them interact, creating a overall curve for the performance, but also opening the space to unexpected moments of coincidence, expanding perception to the moments that happen in between things, to other kinds of presence.
Concept, Direction and Performance: Nahuel Cano
Choregraphic Advisor and Performance: Amparo Gonzalez
Sound Advisor: Ezequiel Menalled
Inflatable: Mirja Bons & Nahuel Cano
Light Design: Vinny Jones
Conceptual Advisor: Ezequiel Gatto
Artistic Advisor: Pablo Fontdevilla
Photography: Thomas Lenden
Quiet Storms premiered 4 September, 2020 at DAS Theatre, Amsterdam.
