Saturday, November 25, 2006

Grey Matter

"Sometimes the world of colour blinds you too much that it would be better to see things in black and white instead." - text message from a friend

Last wednesday, my friend and I performed a 10 minute dance for the tribute to National Artist Arturo Luz at CCP. Our piece was inspired by and performed in-front of a huge mural by the artist entitled "Black forms in White Space."

Our lighting was bare and stark and so were our costumes. I was white. My friend was black. Our steps were simple and barely complicated, but the intentions behind each movement required us to go through all states of consciousness from innocence to passion, from familiarity to contempt. What made it difficult to nail was the fact that our choreographer wanted us to dance with a distilled quality and have a sterile effect.

When we started out, we had a dynamic that we thought worked. My partner being very giving was the submissive half. I being very giving, as well, (I like to think of myself as such) generally took the lead. But it did not seem to work. After our last rehearsal-run on the day of the show, I decided to let her take the reins instead. This changed our dynamic allowing her to create the pulse of our dance. All I had to do was react appropriately. This brought our dance to a whole new level. I had to submit. After all, it's Black forms "IN" White Space. She was black. I was white.

In life, who is black and who is white is a totally grey matter.

2 comments:

weye said...

met someone in my Sagada trip (of all places!) who said he saw you perform. well, at least he said he saw the arturo luz show and saw the performances. according to him, two performances daw: a duet (?) and a group. i take it from your post that you were in the two-person performance. with his good review of the show (with him saying he preferred the two-person) and your post, i know i missed a lot by not attending.

Unknown said...

yup. that was our dance. don't worry there'll be more performances for you to see.. :)