A Contact Improvisation duet presents to an observer a recurrent set up: two dancers who are almost constantly ‘touching’ each other. Through this residency, Alejandro will seek to find processes for choreographing partnering dance using the movement language of Contact Improvisation.
How do we justify, in the context of our everyday lives, the close proximity and the touch between two people (as it happens in Contact Improvisation), beyond the archetypical concepts of intimacy or personal space? What are the ‘forms’ within this dance-form that can be used to suggest a context that will better support the audience’s experience of the dance? How can this dance form create a dialogue with the music that tolerates the shifts of tempo that Contact Improvisation needs to maintain a sense of ‘natural’ flow, while still conforming to rhythmical patterns that can serve to a choreographic design? These questions will drive Alejandro’s research.
Alejandro is a Sydney based performance artist who was born Buenos Aires, Argentina. He has over 15 years of practice in Contact Improvisation, and is also the director of Strings Attached, a dance theatre collective that creates spectacular shows using originally designed aerial systems and large custom-built steel structures.
Alejandro Rolandi and Lee-Anne Litton in Seoul, Korea. Photo: Jinyoung Park