Output details

Mythic

Mythic is a solo structured into seven interconnected sections. It begins in a quest for a movement-language and aesthetic located in the personal, subjective, lived body of experience; but extends to the trans-cultural and transpersonal, embracing ontological, spiritual and metaphysical concerns. The work researches the embodiment of poetic and visual images, testing the kinesthetic, transformatory and choreographic potential of image scoring, thereby initiating the deconstruction of the physical body. It seeks to explore the possibility of an emergence of the ‘other’ through the paradoxical embodiment of that which lies beyond our physical self.

This search is informed by a resonance between Luce Irigaray’s concept of the ‘sensible transcendental’ and the philosophical legacy of Butoh founder Tastumi Hijikata. Irigaray challenges the binary oppositions embedded in spatial representations of the divine; Hijikata, particularly in his essay ‘Wind Daruma’, explores the concept of the body as a mediator for the dead; that the dead live on inside of us. The interplay of these post-secular, post-Cartesian interventions is explored via a further layer of ‘mediation’: the photographic images of ‘ectoplasm’ and physical possession presented by 19th Century Victorian Spiritualist Mediums. Acknowledging the sophisticated technical trickery of these images, research drew upon the languages of film, electro-acoustic sound and costume design to create a contemporary experience of haunting or the ‘uncanny’. Drawing upon Butoh, Expressionist lineages and Japanese aesthetics to expand spatio-temporal possibilities, Mythic develops vocabularies for self-representation: physical languages embodying the emergence of something ‘other’ and ‘becoming other’.

Mythic premiered at Trinity Laban, London (February 2010) and subsequently toured: Michaelas Theatre University of Roehampton, (March); Harry Crook Theatre, Bristol (October); Phoenix Arts Centre, Exeter (November); Rich Mix, London (January 2011); George Wood Theatre, Goldsmiths, (March 2011). Mythic was also presented as a lecture at The Performance Centre, University of Falmouth, December 2010.