highlike

Alex Ekman

COW

Ekman talents extend to the lighting and stage design and his eye for structuring an environment is unerring. There is no set as such, excepting the plaster cow which dangles overhead, but the stage surface has its share of movement as little island-blocks rise up and pits sink down. The extreme tilting of the stage at one point causes unfortunate Bauch to roll, cow-like, almost into the pit. COW has its iconic Ekman moment in the scene that opens on a stage full of swirling dancers in white skirts set in a magical silvery mist. Mikael Karlsson, whose music partners the piece provides a subtle and evocative soundscape. He offers a hint of percussive rhythm picked up by the dancers who launch into an ecstatic dance: a stage full of whirling dervishes, until they collapse exhausted.

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Ekmans Talente erstrecken sich auf die Beleuchtung und das Bühnenbild, und sein Auge für die Strukturierung einer Umgebung ist unfehlbar. Es gibt kein Set als solches, außer der Gipskuh, die über ihnen baumelt, aber die Bühnenoberfläche hat ihren Anteil an Bewegung, wenn kleine Inselblöcke aufsteigen und Gruben sinken. Das extreme Kippen der Bühne an einer Stelle führt dazu, dass der unglückliche Bauch kuhartig fast in die Grube rollt. COW hat seinen legendären Ekman-Moment in der Szene, die auf einer Bühne voller wirbelnder Tänzer in weißen Röcken in einem magischen silbernen Nebel beginnt. Mikael Karlsson, dessen Musikpartner das Stück ist, bietet eine subtile und eindrucksvolle Klanglandschaft. Er bietet einen Hauch von perkussivem Rhythmus, der von den Tänzern aufgenommen wurde, die einen ekstatischen Tanz beginnen: eine Bühne voller wirbelnder Derwische, bis sie erschöpft zusammenbrechen.

 

Maotik

Erratic Weather
Despite some world leaders skepticism, climate change is a reality and the world isn’t just warming, in some parts of the planet the weather is becoming more erratic. During the last years, our generation has started to observe the effects and consequences of this shift, witnessing violent and unexpected climate phenomenons. Erratic Weather is a digital art project aiming to represent changing atmospheric conditions into an immersive multimedia experience. During the performance, the system uses various source of weather information retrieved from an online database and processed on real time to generate a visual and a surround sound composition. During 30 minutes the audience will experience the life cycle of swirling phenomenons such typhoon, hurricane and tropical cyclone , demonstrating the devastating power of the nature and the emergency to preserve it.

HIROAKI UMEDA

holistic strata
Tokyo-based choreographer and video artist Hiroaki Umeda creates mesmerizing visual environments for his visceral solo works, appearing as a fine-spun swirl of movement in a digital storm of light and sound—an elusive figure, by turns frantic and still, awash in pulsating electronic waves. In a program of acclaimed companion pieces, Haptic and Holistic Strata, Umeda’s distinctive dance vocabulary draws on a range of butoh, ballet and hip-hop. He conceives his interdisciplinary events as a sensorial whole, creating the beats and sonic textures as well as the entrancing video and lighting effects. Designed to elicit primal emotion, Umeda’s work is minimalist and radical, subtle and violent, abstract yet precise, and thrillingly physical.

Anish Kapoor

阿尼什•卡普尔
アニッシュ·カプーア
АНИШ КАПУР
Descension
A pool of dark water swirls in a terrifying spiral, never stopping, never emitting light. It looks black and bottomless. It is the whirlpool to end all whirlpools – a spooky mixture of the vortex that sucked down the Pequod and an illustration from Stephen Hawking’s latest work on black holes. Yet this awe-inspiring phenomenon is an exhibit in an art gallery – the latest sublime spectacle from Anish Kapoor.

Anne Teresa de Keersmaeker

アンヌ·テレサ·ドゥ·ケースマイケル
АННЫ ТЕРЕЗЫ ДЕ КЕЕРСМАКЕР
Drumming Live

In 1998, Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker created “Drumming” for the dancers of her company “Rosas”. This intense and jubilant piece is set to haunting music by Steve Reich, a pioneer of minimalist music. On stage, nine dancers perform an exhausting choreography with swirling rhythms that reveal a deep and vital energy. Today, almost twenty years later, it is the turn of the Paris Opera Ballet’s dancers to adopt it. For the occasion, the choreographer talks to us about this extreme piece.

Cerith Wyn Evans

СЕРИС ВИН ЭВАНС
ケリス·ウィン·エヴァンス
Form in Space…By Light

‘Cerith’s installation sits beautifully within the space, unfolding as you walk through,’ explains Clarrie Wallis, Tate’s Senior Curator of Contemporary British Art. The neon experience builds, from a single ‘peep hole’ ring in the South Duveens, through which you can glimpse swirls of radial light and an imposing octagon in the central gallery. The fractured neon fragments look like frantically drawn sparkler-lines on fireworks night.But there’s method and logic within these celestial scribbles. Hidden in the design are references to a host of highbrow sources, from Japanese ‘Noh’ theatre, to Marcel Duchamp’s The Bride Stripped Bare by her Bachelors, Even (The Large Glass), 1915-23. Don’t worry if you missed them. The beauty of rendering precise (verging on obscure) references in such a celebratory neon explosion allows for multiple – if not endless – interpretations.Each way you look at the sprawling 2km of neon tubing, a different shape or symbol emerges. No small thanks to the elegant way in which the structures have been painstakingly suspended. ‘There were over 1000 fixing points, and obviously we couldn’t drill 1000 holes in the Grade II listed building,’ Wallis explains. ‘We had to work with structural engineers very intensely, so as to be completely happy and convinced that we would be able to remove it without damaging the fabric of the building.’Though it seems too soon to be discussing the installation’s removal, Wallis has a point. It’s a visibly fragile, delicate sculpture – whose impermanence makes it more intriguing. As it is a site-specific sculpture, it can’t be recreated elsewhere. What’s more, because the neon tubes are filled with a constantly moving stream of pulsing, vibrating gasses, visitors will never see the same sculpture twice.

Charles Atlas

Tornado Warning
Tornado Warning, draws from the filmmaker’s early memories of the tornado alerts in his childhood town of St Louis, Missouri. The piece contrasts an orderly space of grids and numbers with a chaotic environment of found images cut from old films, news footage, and the Internet. Ordinary objects fly around an empty room, swirling abstractions dominate the walls, and distorted bodies dance over images of radio waves. Seemingly in motion, the space of Tornado Warning appears unruly, alarming, violent and relentless.

Chris Klapper & Patrick Gallagher

Symphony in D Minor

‘Symphony in D Minor’ is an interactive sound and video installation on an epic scale. A thunderstorm contained within a series of large hand cast resin sculptures, each individual form is a unique instrument hanging from the ceiling. Suspended just within reach and activated by touch, the viewer sets the symphony in motion by pushing the forms through the air to trigger the various sound elements of the storm. Sensors relay individual recordings of thunder, lightning, wind and rain with alternating intensities to a full-scale sound system. Acting as both conductor and musician, the viewer creates an evolving composition out of atmospheric sounds, forging an environment that envelops the audience. Housed within each piece are 2 video projectors employing mapping software to evenly fill the surface of the forms. Like giant illuminated pendulums each sculpture radiates video projections that in their dormant state display abstractions of water droplets and slow moving clouds. As the sensors detect movement different ranges initiate more visual elements of the storm. Once activated, the form then shifts to a swirling torrent of clouds.