- watch: 30th June2020 at 7pm UTC
- duration: 60 min
“Tangible Scores-Connecting with what we can touch” is an interactive performance which involves 14 people getting together on an online platform, who are guided through a personal sensorial experience. Each participant connects from the private space of home and is invited to get involved in a series of explorations starting from the sense of touch. This work was born during the lockdown period caused by the pandemics of COVID-19 as a way to be together in a new manner, which would bring us at the same time to focus on very concrete things like the body and the skin, the house and its textures, and to reflect on how we can talk and share, through online medias, exercises that are normally linked to the field of art, movement and dance explorations or meditative practices. Between the various references we have got for the process of constructing “Tangible Scores”, we came across a very little known Manifesto of the Italian artist Marinetti, founder of the Futurist movement. He talked of the “Art of touch”, the importance of gaining a deeper sensitivity of our skin as a way to survive and get down to the present moment. He prepared some “tactile boards” made of different materials, that he divided into categories according to what sensations and emotions they were able to recall. Even if in a very different context, the one of the post- World War I, the importance Marinetti gave back to the sense of touch seems indeed of most resonance in today’s situation where a big part of our life has moved online and the “social distancing” has changed our possibility of relation not only with people but with objects as well. So in “Tangible Scores” we ask the participants to close their eyes and move their attention to the sensations of their body, listening to the skin and breath and opening up their look to their so apparently well-known space of the house, in order to refresh the perception of what is around them. Moreover not neglecting the possibilities the web is offering, in the sense of networking and connecting from different geographical areas, opening a window to other contexts, Tangible Scores is a time for a group to establish a dialogue around personal experience from their very special place. Can we re-appropriate our home in a time when it has almost become a prison, a given- for-granted space? “Tangible Scores” is made of 4 scores and an after talk: -Score I, attending to the fingertips and a collective hands-dance. -Score II, a blind-walk in the space around. -Score III, building a tactile board, inspired by Marinetti. -Score IV, going back to feeling the atmosphere of the house. -After talk, sharing thoughts. “Tangible Scores” was hosted by the Spring 2020 Theater+Dance Virtual Studio Lab of UC San Diego.
BIO: Melissa Cisneros is currently an MFA student in Dance-Making and Performance in the Department of Theater & Dance at UC San Diego. Melissa studied Dance-Making at the School for New Dance Development (2001-2004) and Fine Arts at the Gerrit Rietveld Academie (2005-2007) in Amsterdam, NL. Since then, she works as an independent artist developing and promoting creative projects related to the research, creation, production and dissemination of contemporary performing arts in Mexico and abroad. Her work is constituted by a permanent coming and going between artistic practice and theory, a transit that takes place in the field of the body. Together with Marta Sponzilli she established in 2010 the trans-disciplinary platform, La Mecedora, a nomadic initiative that cherishes new ideas within body related art emerging in creative processes. Countering economical discourses in art that focus on efficiency, time-pressure and final end products. Instead, it illuminates the rich and insightful path leading towards the eventual performance, dance or art piece whilst reflecting on how perceptions are conditioned by socio-economic factors. ARTIST’S WEBSITE
Marta Sponzilli is an independent artist, involved in movement research and collaborative projects around body and choreography. She graduated in contemporary dance from the Academy De Theaterschool in Amsterdam, NL (2006). Later on in 2015 she studied in Madrid at the Master en Prácticas escénicas y cultura visual (MPECV). She lived many years in Mexico City where together with Melissa Cisneros she founded the project La Mecedora. Her work as dancer and choreographer has been nourished by a diversity of experiences. The meeting with Min Tanaka and the BodyWeather training and performance practice has been particularly influential, opening up her personal language and research about working with images, landscapes and imagination. Currently she is studying Physiotherapy at the University La Sapienza in Roma (IT) and working at the artistic collective Annie Jones which she co-founded with Stefania Carvisiglia and Giulia Conte. ARTIST’S WEBSITE