MEDIATHEK

I. Waking en-dessous (20min.): With musical collaborator Nilan Perera and lighting designer Rebecca Picherack, Susanna Hood fuses a dynamic and visceral vocabulary of voice, movement, text, and light to explore the shifting relationship between two people, a person and space, and the present and past. The work is best described as a poem of movement, word and music based on the states of presence and absence, the voyage from one to the other, and the threshold in between. When you are in two places at once? Where are you? Anywhere? The movement world of this 20-minute piece juxtaposes an angular and sharp precision that vibrates and tears through a confined space, with rugged animal sensuality that slithers across the floor. The sound score is developed live by the manipulation of signal picked up by a wireless microphone worn by Susanna. The palette of sound includes spoken and sung voice, the manipulation of inanimate objects in the space, as well as the sound of Susanna’s body moving against surfaces in the playing area. Interwoven with Susanna’s own text, the piece contains text and melodic fragments from “Every time we say goodbye" by Cole Porter, and text fragments from "East Coker" from T.S. Eliot's Four Quartets. Rooted in the kinetic and aural rhythms of the piece, the lighting design moves the viewer through a striking and surprising duet between white light and total darkness. The piece is thus a collage of images set rhythmically to evoke and provoke a resonant emotional experience. Waking en-dessous was premiered in Toronto in March 2004 and continues to travel throughout Canada as part of the company's repertoire. II. Still (40min.): An emotionally charged 40-minute solo by and for Susanna Hood, still takes you on a journey through an infernal landscape of dream and memory, at one moment plummeting into darkness, the next blossoming into light. Together with musical collaborator Nilan Perera, Susanna mines the full potential of the body as an instrument, seamlessly interweaving voice and movement to communicate on a powerfully visceral level. The choreographic and compositional form of the piece stem from three years of creative research into colour. Its thematic structure draws on both a recurring dream / nightmare and traumatic childhood memory of sexual abuse. T.S. Eliot’s Four Quartets and Dante’s “Inferno” also inspire elements of the piece. Susanna’s roles in the performance are choreographer, dancer, vocalist and co-composer with fellow musician Nilan Perera. She wears a wireless microphone that amplifies an ongoing vocal performance and the ambient sounds of her movement, which Nilan manipulates through various effect pedals. The vocabulary is an equal blend of sonic and kinetic gestures and phrases as she moves through a landscape of light and shadow. As the company’s first landmark work, still is a strong example of Susanna’s artistic vision: delving into the spaces between existing forms to shed light on new forms of expression, and putting these new forms to use in a multi-sensory, highly visceral performance work. The original production in November 2000 received an overwhelmingly positive critical response, from the press, the duo’s artistic peers, and a very broad audience base that extended beyond the typical dance audience to theatre-goers, architecture patrons and electronic and new music fans. Both past and present audience members continue to speak of its impact. (Quelle: www.humdansoundart.ca) Anm.: Auf der DVD befindet sich außerdem ein Ausschnitt aus dem Stück "She´s gone away" (17.12.2007, The Theatre Centre Toronto, 6min). / jst