A Certain Degree of Immobility | Um Certo Grau de Imobilidade is an on-going collaboration between choreographer Maria Ramos and myself and takes as its focal point our mutual desire to energise the perceptual space between the audience and the stage. In this performance the function of form is to create a porous space that holds in it the possibility of reciprocity, of transmission between the audience and performers.

We developed the work through a series of residencies to enable us to work together on the floor with the dancers, the space and light. During this first residency at Teatro Viriato, we wanted to explore ways of igniting the space between the stage and the audience, to create more density and dynamics in the space in which the gaze of the audience and the movements of the performer meet. We also wanted to amplify the tension inherent to the architecture and protocols of theatre, the invisible boarder of expectation that infuses a space and shapes the behaviour within it. We wanted to know where does the stage end and the audience begin? Is this a purely physical construction, or are the invisible boarder of expectations and conventions still present in theatre even when the spatial relationship between performer and audience is changed? So we begin with creating different spatial relationships between the audience and the dancers. And while this search for the shape of the relationship can be defined by the presence of the audience in the performance space, it can also be defined by its absence. The stage becomes the space where we could be but are not, our absence in that space made palpable.

Choreography: Maria Ramos
Performance and collaboration Marta Cerqueira and Benedetta Maxia
Light design: Vinny Jones

Residency Teatro Viriato, Viseu, Portugal. December 17-23, 2012.