ULTRADANSE

The initial idea is based on one of Vlad’s childhood memories. It was February 1990 and the first protests after the revolution of 1989 broke out in the centre of Bucharest, in Romania. Vlad is living with his grand-parents in the countryside. They watch TV together and see images of violent clashes between protesters and police. His grandmother picks up the phone and calls his parents but nobody answers, they are probably at the protests. Around 10 o’clock the phone rings. It’s his mother, telling them that everything on TV was a lie, the protests were peaceful that day.

ULTRADANSE is above all a frame concept that brings to light this childhood memory, denouncing manipulations of contemporary media: is the image that we see the whole reality? How can we understand the world if the images are manipulated? Is there any chance that we never see the real heroes on TV?

More broadly, ULTRADANSE focuses on the subjectivity of understanding a situation presented through a video. Two bodies move somewhere in a selected space. Only one of the dancer’s movements are recorded and broadcast elsewhere in real time. The sounds that are produced during the performance are recorded and, through the process of ultrascore*, they become the soundtrack. Thus, the spectator can never experience the reality of the performance and its projection at the same time. Yet one cannot grasp the whole truth if the two are dissociated. “Man brings himself before himself by practical activity, since he has the impulse, in whatever is directly given to him, in what is present to him externally, to produce himself and therein equally to recognise himself.” This is the choreographic application of Hegel’s “concept of self-awareness”.

This is an interdisciplinary project questioning the absence / presence of the filmed performance, based on a multi-layered protocol. By revealing the partiality of the dramaturgical choices, the project emphasizes the importance - jusqu’à s’en aveugler - of the visual representation of the world. Through movement, sound and use of space, the performance explores the dichotomy between an image and its meaning. The project is embodied in a bicameral structure, allowing for a perceived “live” creation and reception, although the two are always inevitably offset.

“To tell the truth, all perception is already memory. We can only perceive the past, the pure present being the elusive progress of the past eroding the future. “ - Henri Bergson