Choreography meets neurodiversity in this solo show.

Leila Lois – ARTSHUB, March 2022

CASTILLO is an athletic, sensory, playful collaboration between choreographers Prue Lang and Jana Castillo, performed as a solo by the latter at Dancehouse, an institution for cutting-edge dance in Melbourne. It throbs with highly controlled, technically difficult dance (from ballet to breakdance), an electric soundtrack that surges over the audience, and video projections that engross and perturb.

The piece set out to explore the themes of neurodiversity, sensory experience and changing modalities of expression. The overall effect of watching the show was thrilling and existential, gaping at the physical prowess of Castillo dancing en pointe in the first segment, with feline animation in the second and smooth urban acrobatics in the final part. The physical and emotional dexterity of the performance was astounding, as a wide variety of styles and emotional registers filtered through Castillo’s body, rippling over the audience like bullet time.

The video projections, by Prue Lang, Pippa Samaya and Takeshi Kondo showed the meticulous manufacture of pointe shoes, followed by a breathlessly strong adage by Castillo, where she turned and vaulted around the stage, her feet often in parallel and gaze out to the audience as if observing herself in the mirror.

The second videography was an extreme close-up of the elements: flowers in the wind, skin and hair bathed in sunshine, waves lapping at sea groynes and insects crawling; the minutiae of the detail at once beautiful and disturbing. The extreme immersive effect was compounded by a disjointed soundtrack by composer Chiara Costanza, with chimes, buzzing and thunder.

Castillo emerged as the spotlight revealed her on stage in butterfly pose on a sheepskin mat, curling out of the position with cat-like nimbleness. Her body seemed to ripple and melt like putty, she moved fluidly like a video in reverse, leading into the next section of projections, an ASMR clip of hands squishing putty.

The final movement of the choreography was nothing short of thrilling, as heavy industrial music and Castillo’s precise robot-like movements fluxed into break-dancing (some of the best I have ever seen). The soundtrack skipped through such old school hits as ‘Ice Ice Baby’ by Vanilla Ice and the audience was roused to whooping, cheering and gasping. Castillo absolutely captivated the eye with her virtuosity through the entire performance; it was hard, if not impossible to look away for a second.

The last song, ‘Girl on Fire’, summed up the performance. We were witnessing a dancer in her absolute prime, dancing with every vigorous fibre of her being and so completely lost in the moment. It was compelling and life-affirming to witness. It seems superfluous to mention but also important that Castillo was performing following a back injury that meant she couldn’t dance in an earlier, scheduled show. Truly she is a force. Such a wonderful synergistic creation from two of Australia’s most exciting choreographers, Prue Lang and Jana Castillo, a privilege to watch.

https://www.artshub.com.au/news/reviews/dance-review-castillo-dancehouse-2535457/

Pointes, Socks and Sneakers in Prue Lang’s CASTILLO

Gracia Haby – FJORD REVIEW March 2022

The sole is stamped with the maker’s mark, the size, and the width of the shoe. The sole is attached to the last with a staple gun, then using the relevant sized upper, the shoe is pulled over the last, the toe is pinned, and the upper is stapled to the seat of the last. This is followed by a combination of paste, hessians and cards to build up the block, depending upon the dancer’s specifications. This is how Freed of London make their bespoke pointe shoes, and this behind-the-scenes process is how Prue Lang’s “Castillo” begins.

Projected on a screen in Sylvia Staehli Theatre of Dancehouse, the over-the-shoulder camera view of the process of pleating the shoe tightly around the last, tying it down, opening for the sole channel and removing any excess material before it can be stitched is not just the craft before the dance, but its own meticulous dance. On the factory floor, this work is precise, to ensure the shoe and the foot work as one. After being stitched, the staples are removed and the shoe is cut down ready for turning. The insole is pasted in and the shoe is turned, put back on the last, and the maker shapes the shoe, performing an initial ‘bang out.’ To finalise the shape of the footwear, the shoe is shaped with a polished hammer, and the insole from earlier is inserted, and the reshaping process is repeated. It is physical work, as the shoe is put through its steps, which is not dissimilar to the steps it will be put through once used, either in class, rehearsal, or on stage.

The synergy between the maker and the dancer, in the opening eight-minute film,¹ and the choreographer, Lang, and the performer Jana Castillo in “Castillo” is not dissimilar either. Lang is interested in exploring the “taxonomy of touch and texture through the lens of choreography and neurodiversity”²and is doing so by inviting us to look at three different types of footwear: pointe shoes, socks, and sneakers.

Just as overnight, the pointe shoes are left in an oven at 80°C before heading to the finishing room to be neatly bound, tacked down, when requested, and socked, Lang has sought to fuse together the “complex art of [all areas of] dance making and embodiment.” Where does one end and the other begin?

When the stage lights come on and I see Castillo, in her pointe shoes, all the better to grand jeté en avant, I see them knowing a sped-up version of what went into making them. I hear the sound of the blocks, left and right shoe conversing. I see the shoes as a glorious extension of her movements as Castillo in turn appears almost in conversation with them, marking time between phases, comparable to where earlier I saw the vamp, sides and back of the shoe marked for where they needed to be cut. Castillo’s movements echo the attachment of the elastic drawstrings in the binding. I see her teetering between being in control of the movement and seemingly led by the shoes themselves, as if it is Castillo who follows the direction of the shoes à la Vicky Page in The Red Shoes (1948).

As Castillo herself explains in Perspective Shift (Episode #3: Jana): “Certain work environments will say that they are all inclusive, but they tolerate you, they don’t accept you, and that’s huge, that’s huge, because you can tell the difference. I felt like if I was a bit “ticky,” or a bit dystonic, I had to apologise. I had to remove myself from situations.”³ “Castillo” is Lang with Castillo, not for. And the emphasis on the ‘with’ is felt. Together they have shaped an “innovative visual-musical journey that celebrates physical intelligence and difference and stimulates new perceptions of the dancing body.”⁴ Together, with a small team, including composer Chiara Costanza, and video by Pippa Samaya and Takeshi Kondo (in addition to Lang), and lighting design by Lisa Mibus, Castillo in “Castillo” is a tactile exploration of “an artist living and thriving with disability.”⁵

In the second film, we move to the natural world, up close. Zoomed in on the details, someone’s head of short wet hair could almost read as a forest of spikey trees. A black and white dog’s torso and hind leg, also momentarily ‘something other’. This reinvention of the known material is what transpires in the movements of Castillo that follow. Things are revealed in a new light in the choreography. This is what the ringing notes of a Bellbird might look like as they cascade through the human body. Castillo traces their gentle procession through her limbs, one hand hovering just above the sound as it chimes its way through her body. I picture a furry green energy, imperceptible to the human eye. Adjusting to the low light, when Castillo appears on the small animal hide, her black-socked feet look almost like the limbs of a domestic cat or dog in a contented stretch.

From movements that express how stones in a creek bed feel to the sole of the foot we arrive at sneakers, artificial light, and manufacturing. In the third short film, a prosthetic right arm and torso tries to connect with the pelvis and legs, severed just below the knee joints, and the space in between what is typically connected, the disconnect, is uncomfortable. What I at first marvelled at — how little it takes to ‘animate’ and make real the unreal — quickly tipped over to feelings of sadness as I viewed a ‘broken’ body, writhing and helpless. The right and left knee joints sought to push the body back together again. Spliced between this visual, hands pull at gum-like, flesh-pink, rubbery dough. It was hard not to read this as the cause of the effect: a squishing of the guts, of the vulnerable internal organs, that lead to a failure to stand. Yet, perhaps, like a micro view of hair that, to me, looked like a forest, this ‘ink blot’ test was something more playful to someone else. Cropped below the knee, you; severed, me. Perhaps someone else reminisced about Play-doh, while another person saw the liberation a prosthetic limb can grant. Perhaps another was in awe of the multidirectional movement and rotation that is the ball-and-socket joint. Indeed, Castillo’s movements in the third response are playful, performative, and nostalgic as fragments of Vanilla Ice’s Ice Ice Baby (1990) ripple through her form, making her limbs liquid one moment, robotic the next, and a warm smile takes over her face. The audience whoops and cheers. “Flow like a harpoon daily and nightly/“Will it ever stop?” Yo, I don’t know/Turn off the lights and I’ll glow/To the extreme/I rock a mic like a vandal/Light up a stage and wax a chump like a candle”.

Like a poem in which line breaks shape meaning, Castillo’s poetic enjambments make multiple interpretations possible, and a warm smile takes over my face.

“The Making of a Freed of London Classic Pointe Shoe” video filmed by Freed’s in their London factory, uploaded 25^th January, 2019, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-zExmSmO35Q, accessed March 4, 2022.

Prue Lang, Choreographer’s Note, “Castillo,” Dancehouse, https://www.dancehouse.com.au/whats-on/castillo-prue-lang/, accessed March 4, 2022.

“Perspective Shift: Season 1, Episode 3, Jana,” SBS, December 2019, https://www.sbs.com.au/ondemand/video/1633420355610/perspective-shift-s1-ep3-jana, accessed March 4, 2022.

Lang, Choreographer’s Note, “Castillo,” Dancehouse, 2022.

“The Journey so far,” Jana Castillo’s bio, https://www.janacastillo.co/about, accessed March 4, 2022.

https://fjordreview.com/prue-lang-castillo/

By Jill Sykes

2 December 2018

★★★★

Carriageworks, November 29

Two intriguing surprises lift this year’s New Breed– emerging choreographers working with members of the Sydney Dance Company – from its customary worth-seeing category into the unexpected: a world of the imagination.

In Towards Innumerable Futures, Prue Lang explores a time when artificial intelligence could take over the human race: would human skills of interaction, empathy and touch win out?

Robotic striding around in strict lines by one of its five performers is contrasted with couples often dancing as one, with entwined limbs, or in perfect opposites like an animated Rorschach blot. Interruptions to the couples are constant, by as little as finger contact, more likely by a shoulder or full body intervention as individuals mix and match in an absorbing jigsaw of ideas and actions.

Neat costumes by Aleisa Jelbart, topped by black or white pageboy wigs, add to the atmosphere built by precise performances and an original soundtrack by Chiara Kickdrum.

Holly Doyle describes her Out, Damned Spot! As “modernised mimicry of the ritualistic, repetitive and cathartic practice of cleansing”. She wraps her five performers in head-to-foot transparent suits (talented designer Aleisa Jelbart again) for their tasks.

They arrive in a tight-knit jogging group, chanting like ancient primates (original sound by Dane Yates) before breaking out into their “cleansing” activities. These become more intense and more complex choreographically as time goes on.

It is another bold journey into the imagination in which Izzac Carroll, Nelson Earl, Chloe Leong, Jesse Scales and Charmene Yap provide not only the dancing skills but a deliciously straight-faced presentation of the theme.

Between these bookend works are two more conventional pieces, also with original music. Janessa Dufty looks to the waratah for inspiration for her Telopea, in which a closely wrought male quartet is initially a quintet with Ariella Casu, who finishes up holding the stage alone in a beautiful solo. Composer Tobias Merz sings his evocative music live.

Mother’s Cry by Katina Olsen brings six women together in a gently flowing essay on looking back on life and how we treated our mothers. It is nicely crafted but not distinctive.

Until December 8.

It’s quite a thing to fly 18 hours; parachute into a continent, country, city, scene for a week; see almost 10 performances over the course of that week; and come out the other end with anything intelligible (never mind intelligent) to say.

As of this typing I’ve done all but the intelligible bit. What to say about Dance Massive?

*

STELLAR PROJECT

Talk is tricky. I think the transition from dancers being dancers to dancers being people in a dance situation, indicated by them bursting into discussion with each other about what they are doing, is maybe impossible to pull off. I think that might be part of the attraction to it: …can I make this work? Can I solve this human problem choreographically?

This first break comes early in Stellar Project; it’s jarring, the first of several shifts Prue Lang presents us with, making it an audience problem as well: will we assimilate this lurch into self-consciousness? Will we resist? I do the latter first, and then at some point I realize I’ve uncrossed my arms.

Lang gives us the ensemble as exquisite body: if I move my arm here, if you shift your weight there — the communication is flawless, and utterly opaque; it’s only if you don’t need specifics that you get answers. The fluidity and precision in the strongest of her performers is inarguable: a last word that will never say itself. And then come the words that we all should understand, the specifics that of course only get us so far. How can these two realms of being sit with each other, or at least jostle alongside? This is also the big question in criticism (and art is always its best critic).

Stellar Project is the only work I see twice. The first night I am too overcome by heat and tired and show fatigue to stay with it. The second night I sit in the front row, and everything is immediately clearer. Ceaseless permutations of bodies. Negotiation. A final circle of darkness over light, like an eclipse. An arm striking upward, striking through.

*

What is contemporary dance. The eventual answer I stumbled toward, the only sensible answer I can ever think of: it’s just how artists are working today; all the variations one might think of, and more.

Claudia La Rocco

SYDNEY MORNING HERALD / THE AGE

Imagine creating a dance about the universe. Do you begin with science – complex mathematical equations and theories – or with philosophy, art, the human body – or even, perhaps, the daily horoscopes – for guidance?

Prue Lang’s new work Stellar Project touches on all of these themes. As with her previous work in this series (2015′s Spaceproject), Stellar Project is a work that digs into what we do not understand from many angles and perspectives.

This complexity of intention lends itself to contemporary dance quite well, and the movement that Lang has developed for her five dancers exploits the fact that dance can be many things at the same time, and perhaps – like our universe – be many things that we simply do not have the language to describe.

Mark Pederson’s​ sound design draws initially on the familiar noise of city life. Sirens wail and birds chirp as the dancers’ focus is drawn repeatedly up to the sky above them. They seem to be looking beyond the clouds, and the score eventually charts the shift from known to undiscovered through its increasing abstraction.

The dancers (Mikaela Carr, Benjamin Hancock, Lauren Langlois, Amber McCartney, Harrison Ritchie-Jones) play what seem like parlour games, shouting out the “answers” as a way to assign meaning to the movement, as though reciting from Wikipedia. Here it is as though Lang is drawing attention to the fact that our understanding is insignificant and, quite frankly, inadequate.

Stellar Project is ambitious in the ideas that it is grappling with, but it is presented in a way that makes the exploration and experimentation a visible scaffolding in performance. The dancers even wear tracksuit pants, as though to underline that our thinking is evolving and unresolved – this is a project under construction and still questioning its place in this world.

JORDAN BETH VINCENT

Blundering, Be-Holding, and Wayfinding as Artistic and Curatorial Methods

Handovers + Translations  BY FAYEN D’EVIE

The building that houses Gertrude Contemporary’s Glasshouse gallery was constructed during the early years of the colonial settlement of Melbourne, on swamplands that would later become the inner-city neighbourhood of Collingwood. The original glassworks— proclaimed as the first in Victoria—closed mysteriously after just a few years. The building was taken over by a candle-making factory, which did not last long either, forced out by local protests over the fumes of boiling, rancid fat. (The conflict attenuated in an 1856 newspaper editorial “The Right to Be a Nuisance” that pilloried the owners’ defence of their right to stench the neighbourhood.) The building was then repurposed as a tannery and boot-making factory, which survived for several decades, until the chain of industrial occupation was ultimately disrupted by gentrification, culminating in the architectural renovation of the ground floor Glasshouse gallery. This history of handovers from one venture to another, with shifting inflections in material transformation and recurring tensions over the politics of space, reverberated in a performative exhibition that I initiated in late 2016 at Glasshouse, titled [...]{…}[...].

The exhibition was conceived as an experiment proceeding from blindness, one that would begin with artists with experience of blindness, and then evolve through a sequence of handovers of a mutating installation, amongst a complex web of collaborators and an intermittent public audience. When the first group of collaborators convened for the inaugural working session, the space was near empty, other than a collection of steel joints and poles and a temporary water bath, where sculptor Sophie Takách was soaking kangaroo rawhides. Artist-writer Troy McConnell and I initiated the session by mapping

the gallery, describing our perceptions of the tactility of the architecture, and temperature shifts as we moved around the space. Through assisted clenching and unclenching of his hands, McConnell then dropped the “Prologue to Handling” bronzes onto a damp hide attached with S hooks to a steel armature. He also clenched and unclenched a smaller scrap of rawhide, stained with tread marks from his wheelchair that McConnell had directed be pushed back-and-forth over top at rapid speed. This smaller scrap of leather fell to rest, dangling, about a steel joint. Throughout the sculptural process, McConnell and I sustained a descriptive conversation, while Takách hovered nearby, tightening or torquing steel joints, twisting hides, testing tensions, wetting and wringing skins. As we worked, sound artist Bryan Phillips recorded vocal utterances and the vibrations of materials as they were prodded/pinged/squelched/dragged, while photographer Pippa Samaya documented ephemeral moments of touch and handling.

After our bodies had been removed from the gallery, Phillips composed a sound work from the vibrational recordings of our sculpting process, responding to my provocation that we retrieve audiodescription as a generative artistic medium, rather than a post facto accessibility service. We installed the sound work with spatialised dynamics, mounting the left and right speakers at opposite ends of the gallery. Recall that Forsythe had referred to Morin’s translation of his topological manipulations, not only into sculptural form, but also into “the universal yet somewhat hermetic language of mathematics” (2011, 91). Language —whether inscribed, vocalised or codified—introduces a third site for manifesting choreographic idea-logics, triangulating the choreographic object and a body-in-motion. Thus, Phillips’ sound work not only introduced more complex sensory reverberations into the evolving installation, but could also be understood as a provocation for movement improvisations and choreographic thinking.

Offering the sound work in this context, we passed the gallery over to Prue Lang who had worked closely with Forsythe as a dancer and as a choreographer. She inherited a sparse installation: the vibrational audiodescription work; the sculptural assemblage from the first session, with joints locked to prevent structural collapse; an assortment of steel rods, joints, and hooks that could be used to extend the existing assemblage or to construct new armatures; and an expanded inventory of wet and dry rawhides. Lang worked with three professional dancers over several private sessions, listening to the audiodescription work, investigating the sculptural forms, and developing choreographic scores. Intermittently, Sophie Takách and I would adjust the installation, adding or subtracting steel poles, rewetting hides, expanding or contracting the range of torque, locking or releasing steel joints to alter the responsiveness of the installation. Note that prior to our handover to Lang, we had removed the “Prologue to Handling” bronzes from the gallery, but their presence was still palpable within the installation. The weight of the bronzes had deformed the damp rawhides, imprinting the volume of each bronze through simultaneous negative and positive casting, since each textured shape could be encountered from either side of its host hide. Like Morin’s description of space-like imagination, both the interior and the exterior surfaces of the objects could be handled at the same time. Volumes had been translated—literally—into tactile interior/exterior skins.

Rawhide had been proposed by Takách as a sculptural material partly in response to the historic use of Glasshouse as a tannery, but also because the rawhide is able to transition from a supple material, which diverse bodies can manipulate through micro or macro movements, to a rigid sculptural document of the labour, exertion, and physicality of handling. The steel armatures similarly echoed the site’s industrial past and functioned as a mutable skeletal structure. References to handovers and translations amongst

industrial/animal/human bodies reverberated through the development of Lang’s choreographic scores. As she later recalled,

I had been exploring the metal parts of the structure like they were my own joints—twisting, rotating, manipulating them with the resistance they required from my muscles—then in turn allowing these structural articulations to inform my body’s organisation and folding/unfolding/re- organising strategies … I tried to wrap/curl/slide my arms and fingers around and along the metal framework. I began to explore the ‘infrathin,’ that heightened state where the suppleness, elasticity and warmth of my own skin/body seemed to ‘meld’ with the rigid, cold, surfaces of the metal. From here I made a careful transition from the metal hook to the animal hide. My fingers absorbed the texture of this new material pulling and pushing the thickness of this other skin, recognisably different from my own. This other skin was dead—losing its cellular elasticity in a slow process of hardening, becoming brittle. I wanted to bring it back to life; manipulate it, pull it and push it until it became more malleable, compliant with my body, but also empathetic and complicit.

By the official opening of the exhibition—which represented the third phase of handovers, now to a public audience— Lang had developed a 20-minute choreographic score for four dancers. She invited the gathered crowd to sit or stand anywhere in the gallery space. The looped audiodescription work played in parallel, but was muted for a five-minute period during one sequence of the performance. Amongst those in attendance was Troy McConnell, who had returned to experience the evolution of the installation and the choreographed performance. Photographer Pippa Samaya had also returned to document the occasion. Her contributions introduce the problematic of handling images through blindness. Whereas a binary conception of blindness might disavow visual documentation altogether, I suggest that a less clichéd understanding of oculardiversity, more attuned to the complexity of blindness, may generate new methods of witnessing and archiving performance. Interlacing the theories of Roland Barthes, James Elkins, and Susan Sontag, photographic records are always fugitive, partial, and hallucinatory.6 From blindness, I propose that we can resist the ocularcentric conspiracy that endorses discrete photographic images as the dominant archival memory of an ephemeral performance. Through an epistemology of hallucination, photographic images can be approached not as documentary evidence, but as conversational prompts that may activate a thicker description of an ephemeral performance, by allowing for multiplicities of descriptive memories, counter-memories, and embodied re-readings.

Within [...]{…}[...], I experimented with transfiguring image description —a conventional accessibility strategy for blind audiences—as a discursive method. Consider the following descriptive texts from Prue Lang and Troy McConnell, who each chose an image to describe from the opening performance, out of a set of documentary images of relational contact and interaction from throughout the Glasshouse experiment. McConnell’s description took the form of a conversation with disability support worker Terry Foley.

Caption for an absent image. An ephemeral moment in the opening performance of {…}[...]{…}.Image description by Prue Lang: “I instructed the performers to focus on the materiality of the space. The metal, hook, hide, wall, floor, fabric, skin, flesh, hair… While we sensed the spectators in the space, an interaction between the spectator and the performer would only occur if the performer decided to extend their material investigation into the spectator (surface of a shoe, brushing of clothes, texture of hair, tracing a chair, sharing of a wall surface, etc). I eliminated communicating with the spectator through a text, eye contact or body language … The spectator was simply a part of the materiality of the space in which our physical thinking transpired.”]//

Caption for an absent image. An ephemeral moment in the opening performance of {…}[...]{…}.Image conversation between Troy McConnell and Terry Foley: “Troy is on the left of the picture sitting with the hide on the frame. There is a male dancer in a long sleeve, white top, dancing and laying on the floor, with his right arm extended on the floor above his head pointing. He has his left hand on his hip. There is a woman sitting on the floor, with her elbow resting on her knee, half cross legged and looking upwards. There is a person sitting on a chair against the far wall, with legs crossed and one hand in their lap. The person has their chin in their hand while their elbow rests on their knee.” Troy’s comment: “There is a spectator who looks from the body language that they are deeply pondering or may be judging. I was experiencing it from two points of view, as the artist and as the spectator, as the dancers moved around me.”]//

As the image descriptions infer, from the sensory perspective of the dancers the choreographic score deprivileged spectators, directing a material equivalence between human bodies, sculptural objects, and architectural textures. Yet, as implicated in Troy McConnell’s remarks, from the sensory perspective of the audience the choreographic performance reasserted spectatorship, even for those with blindness. At times, a foot could be heard scraping across a floor, or the thud of a dancer slumping against a wall, and some within the audience received a fleeting touch from a dancer, or experienced proprioceptive awareness of near contact. However, most of the performative movements—like the Forsythe manifestations—could only be apprehended visually. Earlier I proposed an inversion of the concept of accessibility, shifting to models that activate attentiveness and extend the movement vocabularies more broadly. For sighted onlookers, the opening performance certainly offered a glimpse of the intricacy and intensity of tactile and haptic intervention possible when moving attentively within the exhibition topology. But in the wake of the opening, a question vexed me: how could performative movements of one person (or group) be experienced by a second person (or group) in ways that would more radically displace spectatorship? Although this question is yet to be resolved, some possible wayfinding principles would emerge as the durational exhibition unfolded.

PERFORMANCE PARADIGM 13 (2017)

Dance Massive review: Spaceproject takes on infinite and minute

From beneath a small table, a dancer speaks of the “post-modern apocalypse” and “an implosion of meaning”.  In her program notes, choreographer Prue Lang refers to the human body as a medium for the comprehension of space and time, a notion both mathematical and emotional.

Lang employs complex movement to edge up to these thematic ideas, drifting through a seemingly random, and yet carefully curated collection of concepts as though she is stringing beads from one hundred different necklaces on a single thread. There is a sense that Lang is toying with us – daring us to cobble together a cohesive grasp of her processes and intentions when they might be deliberately obscured.

How we find our way (and indeed, how the dancers themselves find their way) is a recurring theme in Spaceproject, explored through gestures that inscribe connected loops, shared points of contact, or navigational references such as a compass. Taking on roles as poets and philosophers through to friends bickering during a bushwalk, the dancers embody these loops, points of contact and compasses, seeking moments of engagement with the space around them.

There is something generous about the movement in this work. Dancers (Lauren Langlois, Benjamin Hancock, Amber McCartney and James Batchelor) dive into movements that seem to be drawn from inspiration as varied as the expanse of our universe, or as insignificant as a mosquito bite.

Lang was a dancer with The Forsythe Company, and there is certainly something Forsythe-esque about her integration of ideas with movement, text and sound. However, Spaceproject offers a unique exploration of ideas, and is a fine addition to Dance Massive’s investigation of contemporary dance in its many forms.

Jorden Beth Vincent

Read more: http://www.smh.com.au/entertainment/dance/dance-massive-review-spaceproject-takes-on-infinite-and-minute-20150312-141tqn.html#ixzz3UmSTrLnB

« Il n’y a qu’un seul élément de l’espace : le mouvement. » Cette définition de l’architecte et designer Frederick Kiesler donne d’emblée l’idée des recherches entreprises par Prue Lang. Ex-interprète et chorégraphe au sein de la célèbre compagnie de William Forsythe, l’artiste australienne a initié, en 2008, une démarche singulière. Dans Un réseau translucide, elle proposait « d’explorer un nouveau format de spectacle en intégrant des questions environnementales à la scène ». Cette pièce récupérait notamment sa propre énergie pour le son et les lumières. Première chorégraphe prônant une danse « verte » – ou la production d’éco-gestes au théâtre –, Prue Lang a investi son langage artistique du côté de l’expérimentation. Pour Timeproject, elle a développé un prototype de chaussures, grâce auxquelles l’énergie des danseurs est récoltée afin de produire de l’électricité. Dans cette pièce, la chorégraphe se consacre d’abord à l’analyse du temps, notamment dans sa relation à l’action. Telle une matière avec sa malléabilité, son élasticité, ce partenaire souvent méconnu de l’espace est le point d’origine de cette création où la chorégraphie se meut en système. Tel un lancer de dés, les actions déterminent la durée : le jeu transforme la danse et l’interprétation et les questionne à la fois. Car si le temps peut être considéré comme une donnée quantifiable, sa perception reste subjective et impalpable, notamment au théâtre, explique Prue Lang. Timeproject enquête sur ce mystère.

Irène Filiberti

MAINS D’OEUVRES

Dance is as inherently eco-friendly as the Formula 1, but for Prue Lang it is not enough. The former Forsythe Star pedaled on a bicycle in order to generate power required for her “Sustainable Dance Performance”.

Description: Consume energy, produce energy. With which goal? People want to live as long as possible. How they live is demonstrated by Prue Lang, Vanessa Le Mat and Nina Vallon in the completely wonderful “A translucent network” They run through a maze of imaginary rectangular railways and streets, in search of edibles. On the ground are macarons distributed like a chessboard. With deceptive plots, tricks and desires in angular, mechanical and even animalistic movements two women approach a macaron. Then it is swooped up. Or snatched away. Meanwhile the third woman pedals away at the generator in order to produce the sparse light.

Yet the eating produces energy and the dancing generates more energy. On their bodies, sewn into their costumes, are a series of batteries that are charged by their movements. They then provide the current of energy needed for the music in the next performance. The shrill costumes are by Amanda Parkes from New York, a designer experienced in crossing clothing with technology. Premiered in Paris, Prue Lang calculated precisely how many macarons corresponded to the energy spent in the performance. In Düsseldorf she will look for another biscuit. From local production not to use unnecessary energy. Thus please, do not go by the car to the performance!!

Assessment: Despite all constraints that they impose: the sinewy trio dance in no way into an eco-niche, but make figuratively tangible how the joys of living and everyday urban life can be brought into harmony. Kicking legs on a bicycle can in fact be splendid, not to mention their tactical dancing. “A Translucent Network” is the first creation in Lang’s Sustainable Dance Project and now gives a very strong desire for more. (Thomas Hahn)

The 2010 Adelaide Festival will host the world premiere season of Frame and Circle – a masterful new two part production from South Australia’s award winning Leigh Warren & Dancers showcasing the talents of two of Australia’s most creative contemporary choreographers, Leigh Warren and Prue Lang.

Comprising two dance works – Rubicon (choreographed by Lang) and Meridian (choreographed by Warren) Frame and Circle will be presented at the Space Theatre (Adelaide Festival Centre) from 10–14 March 2010.

The production marks a homecoming for Paris based Lang and is the first time the two award-winning choreographers have worked in a program together.

“I’ve long admired Prue’s extraordinary abilities as both a dancer and choreographer and I was thrilled when she accepted my invitation to work on this new production,” says Warren. “It’s a unique event really – in that we have both individually created our own works but they are connected by the very nature of their contrasting subject matter. We also share many philosophical understandings about dance and improvisation techniques which stem from working at different times with the legendary choreographer, William Forsythe.”

An internationally acclaimed dancer in her own right, Lang is also the creative force behind some of the most ambitious choreographic works currently being made in Europe. Born in Melbourne, Lang was invited to France in 1996 to join Compagnie L’Esquisse and later joined Forsythe’s revolutionary Frankfurt Ballet (1999–2004).

Over the past five years, Lang has created numerous critically acclaimed productions including the multi-award winning performance installation Infinite Temporal Series (2006). Inspired by the writings of author and poet, Jorge Luis Borges, the series rose from Lang’s desire to create a concise yet dense format of performance, in which the complexity of an idea is explored over many years – so each work develops its own textual, perceptual and physical form, which is subsequently embedded in the next work.

Rubicon is the latest development away from Lang’s Infinite Temporal Series. For this new work, Lang has shifted her ‘frame’ of reference from a three dimensional perspective to exploring the framework within which games – be they sporting or board games are played.

“While Prue is using the concept of the ‘frame’ for her work, my piece is all about curves, intersections, arcs and orbits,” says Warren.

Taking its name from one of the imaginary longitudinal arcs circling the globe from north to south, Meridian sees Warren explore the links between his dancers’ innate sense of balance and the symbolism of the circle as it transcends space and time.

“Geometric, philosophical and unique ‐ the circle draws an invisible thread through the years that appears to connect key events in my life,” says Warren. “The circle has a significant place in mythology; from the standing stones of Stonehenge’s ‘time cycle’ to phrases like ‘the circle of life’. In the process of creating any dance, the composition of space and time form the building blocks of choreography.”

With a production team boasting two of Australia’s leading theatrical artisans – Mary Moore (set & costume design) and Margie Medlin (lighting design), Frame and Circle promises to engage, provoke and inspire audiences in this – its highly anticipated, world premiere season.

Dancers: Leigh Warren & Dancers

Choreographers: Prue Lang and Leigh Warren

Set & Costume Design: Mary Moore

Lighting Designer: Margie Medlin

Leigh Warren and Dancers

Frame and Circle

From the outset, the staging of Rubicon draws you in. The square is Wimbledon green, with marking obscure/familiar enough to hint a game, a court, an arena, somewhere to do a structured battle.

And when the dancers come out to play they do so in the sort of languid time which allows our eyes to wander, our heads to move, following the intersections, rejections and connections that grace one then the other. In this way a landscape of interactions and their implications seeps into us.

Before long the spaces delineated become makeshift rooms where singles and couples lie as if depicting the passage of time or the give and take on the energy of life while half-serious duets and solos depict the consequences of what came before.

Throughout it, the soundtrack could not have been better chosen – the perfect mix to lure and lull us into the nether-world which these creatures inhabit. Bravo, Prue Lang –delightful.

In Meridian, Leigh Warren puts us into a simple white circle.

Leigh’s dancers run on, and work hard without any time seeming frenetic and out of our grasp, and the duets in the second part in particular show the sheer beauty of the choreography. Again you sit close enough to hear the footfall and breath of the piece – the extra gifts from this company and the closeness of these works.

Incredibly, the piece is occasionally lit with just one lantern – a sacred emphasis on pure form and shadow making the experience different for each one of the audience. This is an intimate space, and here we deal with intimate things – the orbits we find ourselves in, the need for touch, the end of it all.

Alexander Waite Mitchell’s score is again a highlight, the sort of atmospheric rendering that would come from the love child of Keith Jarret and Arvo Part. When it is all over, too soon, small pools of sweat remain as the only reminders of a night of beauty and meaning.

(Rob De Kok)

The proscenium makes it inevitable: one looks at the other.
Seldom, however does such intimacy succeed in a proscenium-like construction as it does in Prue Lang’s exquisite “Infinite Temporal Series II”. The Cologne association “tanz performance köln” invited long-time Forsythe dancer-choreographer to its festival in the Alte Feuerwache, a mini-edition of the previous “DAMPF” festival.

Prue Lang wanted a moving audience: Actually, her spectators can walk, place themselves alternately in four black prosceniums which she has built around a central space with the dancers inside. But hardly anyone could have the concentration to solve this performance, in which one felt like a witness of a physical experiment, if it were not for this unbelievable sensuousness, Prue Lang succeeds despite abstraction.

By means of the escalating breath of the dancers, the warm light one senses, the quiet spatial electronic sound and the movements always gentle even in the quick passages – the performance proves an absolute security of aesthetic style, even by her restraint. In such a dramatic apocalypse, Prue Lang opposed poetic infinity –and that was certainly not a random choice (Nis)

As soon as the music rumbles in the loudspeakers, as if under water, one has the feeling of entering a completely different world and stays in this world until the end of the performance.

The spectators of Prue Lang’s innovative dance installation “Infinite Temporal Series II” in Frankfurt’s Mousonturm are not only viewer of the events, but also part of the staging – the staging of a special vision. On four sides separated from each other, they sit around a black box, looking through four large openings.

From far, each of the four rooms of viewers look like cinemas, at close range it recalls being in the middle of an aquarium in which three other sides are strung with twilight faces. One may also get up and move, the view is simultaneously the same, but not the sound. Through ones own motion, a feeling for the whole space is perceived, for the backs open up from real theatrical spaces to actual walls of the previous box. The small, warmly illuminated space has a magical effect largely due to the movement of his inhabitants.

In only a few square meters four beings float up and down, very slowly, briefly a head twitches aside or a body focal point drops. The eyes of the four dancers in blouses and trousers seem to see into another world. The Australian dancer and choreographer Prue Lang, who danced and choreographed for years with William Forsythe, created “Infinite Temporal Series I” for nine members of the Frankfurt Ballet in 2003 -an enchanting arrangement of small rooms with views throughout. In the Mousonturm now for the first time the successive piece is presented, more limited, however equally fascinating, also by its ambiguity.

Different movement speeds are scenically strung together, there is never a standstill, everything is in flux, and at the end the images and the states mix together. First, each entity is on its own, then they notice each other, seize themselves at the shoulders, finally stretch two fingers like a pistol and an opposite falls down in slow motion down and stands up again. How are these strange concretizations derived from the “dive” in the aquarium? Finally, they create stage, cinema and the poetic fantasy of other worlds, but also the crime. Or are the played murders to make the spectator attentive to their own gaze? Does a kind geologic history of aqueous birth up to the chaos perhaps even pass by? At the end the dancers and spectators disappear and the rounded chair backs look like waves. Perhaps again a new life will develop. (Melanie Suchy)

José Manuel Gonçalves est au moins un directeur de scène nationale qui ne se contente pas des vieilles formules d’abonnements, et d’une programmation de goût moyen uniforme. Dès que l’on pénètre dans l’enceinte de cette ancienne ferme des chocolats Poulain, on est saisi par l’atmosphère de culture vivante. On n’est pas dans le compassé, on n’est pas dans un funérarium, on est dans un lieu vivant. Cela se sent tout de suite.Temps d’image s’annonce comme un laboratoire des arts. Cela est initié par Arte et la ferme du Buisson, et cela a lieu dans huit pays d’Europe et même au Canada. Ce qui est curieux, c’est que ce n’est absolument pas l’ambiance frelatée de l’Avignon 2005. On a droit ici à des réelles recherches d’artistes qui même non abouties vous ouvrent l’appétit.
Je ne vois que 3 spectacles sur une vingtaine de propositions, puisque je ne peux être présent que cette fin d’après midi du 8 octobre:
La fleur de peau. Prue Lang, Mathieu Briand- On doit revêtir une combinaison blanche, être nu- pieds, et porter un masque. On est introduit dans une salle remplie de talc (4 tonnes). Sensation de douceur sous la plante des pieds. Les 40 personnes du public sont disposées sur les 3 côtés de la salle. Dès que l’on bouge, un léger nuage de talc s’élève au dessus du sol. Lumière violette rasante. Un couple, dont une danseuse de Forsythe, vont bouger très lentement au fond de l’arène. C’est amoureux, intime et très doux. On plane. L’imagination est à la fête. Cela ne dure qu’une demie heure. On ne voit pas tout, on devine les formes, la danseuse a la seins a l’air, mais en suis- je vraiment sûr, c’est sans importance.
L’aube d’un tortionnaire Théâtre clandestine -Une tentative de reproduire sur scène l’expérience de Stanley Milgram. (Montrer comment n’importe qui peut devenir tortionnaire à partir d’une expérience où l’on doit envoyer des décharges électriques de plus en plus forte à un individu). L’équipe est italienne. Un commentaire nous raconte qu’Eichmann était tout sauf un monstre, or il a commis des choses monstrueuses. Le spectacle commence très mollement avec de la musique techno et de la vidéo, au bout de 20 minutes, on voit enfin la fausse chambre de tortures. Malheureusement, cela n’avance toujours pas. Tentative avortée. Dommage.
Tout vu. Transquinquennal. Jan Hammenecker -Un spectacle sur la télévision, par une équipe de belges bien décapante. Le spectacle n’en est qu’à sa seconde représentation, donc il est encore trop foisonnant, mais la première demi-heure sous forme de conférence est un bonheur. Ensuite, cela traine en longueur, et à partir du moment où un jeu se fait avec 24 téléviseurs, cela devient ennuyeux comme de la télé. Mais potentiellement, il y a à attendre de cette équipe. (Jacques Livchine)

Australian choreographer Prue Lang has spent nearly 10 years in Europe, the past five collaborating and performing with William Forsythe, who revolutionized ballet technique in the most shocking, contemporary ways.
Infinite Temporal series looks nothing like any Forsythe work seen in Australia during the past few years but is informed by his creative methods.  It is made with a perfectionist’s microscopic gaze, evaluating and editing the dancer’s responses to specific investigative tasks, and shaped to insinuate itself into the viewer’s mind.
The rewards in this transfixing 25-minute work, with images of bodies in a field of seemingly limitless space, are glorious, enduringly so.
The Garden of Forking Paths – a novel by Jorge Luis Borges, is the inspiration for Infinite:  Lang reflects on Borges’ notions of simultaneous temporalities, and explores dreams intersecting with consciousness and narrative form in dance.  She invited the viewer to construct a personal narrative by observing several dances simultaneously.
Crucial to Lang’s concept is her design, an arcade of five rooms, each with a large, unglazed window, through which viewers – 30 at a time, in three shows a night – are free to move, just as the dancers do. Sitting in the last room, one can see the entire vista, as if through a series of proscenia or a hall of mirrors.  The effect is of seeing multiple images filled with potential scenarios.
When all nine dancers move, each with different gestures but all at once, Tiepolo’s ceilings come to mind.  In stasis, the dancer could be Caravaggio or Vermeer portraits: quiet but loaded, seen against the furthermost wall on which ripe, persimmon-coloured light is projected, then smudged or blackened with charcoal. Holding all of this together are fragments of Borges’ text and perfectly sympathetic sonics by Deadbeat,and Ekkehard Ehlers.
Infinite is an entirely contemporary creation yet suggests older associations such as Tai Chi, in which different body parts rotate around different axes, cohering into one fluid expression. At other times the movement is lyrical, searching, but never soft; or driven, springy and even jerky, as if pulled around by elastic twanging inside the dancers’ bodies.
Clearly, this synthesis of Lang’s ideas is not just about movement; it demands much more than the dancers’ kinaesthetic intelligence and investment in the smallest detail. Lang has drawn from them all of the depths of emotion and sensitivity that are dramatically transformative.
Infinite Temporal Series is a gift to every dancer in it: Kristy Ayre, Fiona Cameron, Antony Hamilton, Paea Leach, Jo Lloyd, Ryan Lowe, Carlee Mellow, Byron Perry and Claire Peters. (Lee Christofis)

In Infinite Temporal Series expatriate Australian Prue Lang immerses the audience in an infinitely intriguing experience.  It is deliberately intimate, with the tiny audience situated in close proximity to the dancers in a series of rooms, each with a bench along one wall.  Each room has a frame in the back wall, allowing the audience to see through to the next, or look back towards the first.  Audience members are encouraged to move from one room to the next, though it can be equally satisfying to remain in one place throughout the 35-minute presentation.
At first, it feels like one of those lessons in the art of perspective, with the performers diminishing in size, becoming more remote the further they are distanced from the viewer.  A dancer stands motionless in each room. All begin slowly and simultaneously with a slow twist, drawing a languorous hand up the front of the body to reach upwards, then stepping out into a sweeping spiral.  One is caught between watching the close-up detail of the proximal dancer, or enjoying the synergy of the ensemble.
The dancers maintain a distanced focus, but we can see the tremble of muscles, the flicker of eyelashes, and hear the harsh breathing as they are pulled or projected violently by some apparently external force.  Over this, one dancer addresses his audience in a gentle treatise on being and not being.  The words appear to have no direct relationship to the action, but somehow influence our thinking.
Gradually the dancers introduce different movements so that we see contrasts in energy or direction from a single dancer, set against the synchronicity of the group.  The intricacy increases, but we have been led into it slowly, learning to enjoy the multiplicity of choices.  The serendipitous intrusions of audience members as they move from one room to another, taking up positions to look forward or backwards to see through to the front room become framed like portraits.  We see our neighbours in a new light – unwittingly becoming performers in a completely unthreatening way.
This is a profoundly satisfying work, carefully polished – not to be missed. (Hilary Crampton)

Durch einen Vorhang erhält man Zutritt zu einem der fünf hintereinander liegenden Räume, die Prue Lang, Tänzerin des Frankfurte Balletts- für ihre Tanzinstallation “lnfinite Temporal Series” im Bockenheimer Depot hat bauen lassen. Durch Fenster, die auf den ersten Blick aussehen wie Spiegel und die sich perspektivisch in der Ferne verkleinern, sind sie miteinander verbunden. In jedem Raum gibt es eine Bank, auf der die Zuschauer Platz nehmen können.

Dann betritt je ein Tänzer oder eine Tänzerin einen Raum. Synchron beginnen sie zunächst, sich ganz langsam zu strecken und zu drehen, bis der erste ausbricht, um seiner eigenen Zeit zu folgen. Plötzlich tauchen immer mehr Tänzer und Tänzerinnen auf, von denen jeder seinen eigenen Zeit vorgaben zu folgen scheint. Scharf umrissen erscheinen ihre Gesichter und Oberkörper in den Fenster rahmen, als wären sie zweidimensionale Fotografien, die man hintereinander geschichtet hat. Jeder Raum wird unterschiedlich bespielt. Mal ballt sich das Geschehen ganz vorne m ersten, mal konzentriert es sich ün mittleren. Bei aller Nähe zu den Tänzern gleitet der Blick doch in die Ferne, sucht nach Mustern in der Choreographie.

Amancio Gonzales als Sprecher lebt in einem ganz anderen Raum als seine Kollegen. Als einziger darf er durch die Fenster klettern, als gälten die Grenzen für ihn nicht. Geschickt zieht Lang das Tempo an und wechselt die musikalischen Grundstimmungen. Die Zuschauer haben theoretisch die Möglichkeit, die Räume während der Vorstellung zu wechseln, um sich andere Perspektiven zu eröffnen. Nach nur knapp einer halben Stunde ist der Tanz schon wieder vorbei. Doch diesmal hätte man sich gewünscht, er dauerte länger. Denn Langs Installation birgt, gerade was Körperbilder und choreographische Möglichkeiten betrifft, noch ein weitaus größeres Potential in sich, das man in der Zukunft unbedingt ausschöpfen sollte. (Gerald Siegmund)

FRANKFURT. Es ist die labyrinthartige Erzählstruktur in den Texten von Jorge Luis Borges, die die Frankfurter Tänzerin und Choreografin Prue Lang fasziniert. Jene Verwobenheit, Komplexität, Unendlichkeit ins Theater zu übertragen, ist ihr selbst gestecktes Ziel. “Infinite Temporal Series” heißt die choreografische Installation, mit der sie jetzt diesen Versuch wagt. Die Premiere des knapp 30-minütigen Stücks war am Wochenende im Bockenheimer Depot.

Lang gehört sei 1999 zum Ensemble des Balletts Frankfurt, wo sie dem Publikum aus Stücken wie “Endless House” oder “Woolf Phrase” bekannt ist. Die neue Installation hat es in sich: Prue Lang hat für ihr Projekt fünf quadratische Räume in einer Reihe hintereinander entworfen. In jedem Raum gibt es eine Bank für die Zuschauer, deren Anzahl auf insgesamt 30 begrenzt ist. Große Fenster in den Wänden zwischen den fünf Räumen eröffnen dem Publikum einen Durchblick auf den jeweils nächsten Raum, der so wie eine Spiegelung des eigenen wirkt. In diesen Räumen bewegen sich neun Tänzer, die während der Vorstellung die Räume wechseln und sich durch die Installation bewegen. Aber auch das Publikum darf -nein, sollte – während der Aufführung den Raum wechseln, sich in den einen oder anderen setzen; je nach eigenem Gutdünken. Dabei gibt es keine Musik, lediglich Klänge und Rhythmen sowie sprachliche Elemente, zu denen sich die Tänzer bewegen.

Interessant ist die Performance in erster Linie im Hinblick auf der Frage nach der Existenz eines Werkes. Langs Arbeit ist eine der eindrucksvollsten Belege für die Negation des Werkbegriffs: Dadurch, dass jeder Zuschauer individuell Position und Blickwinkel. wechselt, entsteht das Werk erst mit der Wahrnehmung durch seinen Betrachter. Jeder im Raum nimmt die Aktionen naturgemäß unterschiedlich auf, schreibt für sich die Choreografie der Ereignisse selbst. Die Interaktion mit den Tänzern und den übrigen Zuschauern gerät dabei zum wesentlichen Gestaltungsmittel dieses ästhetischen Abgesangs. Je nachdem, an welcher Position innerhalb der fünf Räume sich der Zuschauer gerade befindet, erscheint ihm die Situation komplett anders, nimmt er Worte wahr, die andere nicht verstehen, liest er projizierte Sätze, die andere nicht sehen. “infinite Tempo Series” ist damit weit mehr als ein Projekt oder ein Versuch. Es ist ein choreografierter Beitrag zur kunstästhetischen Rezeption, der selbst die letzten Zweifler fallen lässt. (Christian Rupp)

In Prue Langs wunderbarer Einrichtung führt jemand die Zuschauer zu einer langgestreckten Raum- oder Zellenflucht: weiche Außen-, starre Trennwände in Schwarz. Die fünf drei auf vier Meter kleinen Zellen kommunizieren durch fenstergleiche Öffnungen; jede enthält eine Sitzbank und eine offene (Tanz-) Fläche. Man ist aufgefordert, nach Belieben den Aufenthaltsort zu wechseln, ohne die Performance zu stören. Auch Tänzer und Tänzerinnen fließen in wechselnder Konstellation von einer Raum-Monade in die andere, wobei sie – einen Schritt vom Betrachter -ihre poetisch weich verdrehten Zeitlupen- und schroffen Bewegungsfolgen vollführen. Sie ,spielen’ einzig sich selbst in ihrer schönen Leiblichkeit. Nur ein Akteur rezitiert vorwiegend BorgesTexte und mutiert gleichsam zur Spielfigur. Die in Reihe geschalteten Guckkästen aber, mit Guckloch an der Stirnfront des vordersten und roter Bildfläche aus verfremdeten Fotos am hintersten Raum, nehmen als asketische Tanzstätten beide auf: die Tänzer, die sich anfangs wie Spiegelbilder gerieren, um aus dem kleinsten ,Fehler’ zwischen Bild und Abbild alles Weitere zu entwickeln; und ihre Betrachter, die in Intimität selbst zu Betrachteten werden. Eine weitere “Specials”-Erleuchtung! (Marcus Hladek)

Der Blick auf benachbarte Kunstsparten ist für viele zeitgenössische Künstler selbstverständlich. Freimütig verwenden Choreographen literarische Texte in ihren Stücken, entwickeln bildende Künstler Installationen, in denen der Ton und das Hören eine wichtige Rolle spielen, arbeiten Theaterregisseure mit Videoeinspielungen, die ihren Inszenierungen einen zweiten imaginären Raum eröffnen. Jenseits vordergründiger Schaueffekte, die es oft genug zu beklagen gibt, bietet der Umweg über das benachbarte Feld auch die Chance, das Eigene mit einem fremden Blick zu betrachten. Prue Lang gehört seit 1999 zum Ensemble des Balletts Frankfurt, wo sie dem Publikum aus Stücken wie “Endless House” oder “Woolf Phrase” bekannt ist.

In Melbourne am Australien College of the Arts, wo sie studiert hat, hatte sie viele Stücke für die Bühne entwickeln müssen. Doch das allein habe sie nie zufriedengestellt. So hat sie neben ihrer Ausbildung zur Tänzerin immer wieder Ausflüge in die Welt des Films gemacht, um von dort aus auf den Tanz zu schauen. “Ich war schon immer fasziniert von der Beziehung zwischen Tänzern und Publikum. Wie kann ich diese Beziehung inszenieren, Blicke lenken und bewußtmachen? In einer traditionellen Aufführungssituation, in der man das Stück nur von vorne sieht, geht das normalerweise unter. Man spürt im Zuschauersaal den Luftzug Bewegung nicht.”

Fasziniert von Jorge Luis Borges’ Erzählungen, in denen sich verschiedene Geschichten ineinanderschachteln, hat sie sich überlegt, wie sie die labyrinthartige Struktur seiner Geschichten ins Theater übersetzen könnte. Das Resultat ist ihre Tanz,installation “infinite Temporal Series”, die das Ballett Frankfurt im März im Bockenheimer Depot präsentiert. Wer sich durchs Labyrinth bewegt, muß viele Umwege in Kauf nehmen, um ans Ziel zu kommen. Als Bewegung innerhalb einer festen Form gilt das Labyrinth, von dem schon Homer in der “llias” berichtet, es sei der erste Tanzplatz im Palast von Knossos gewesen, als Sinnbild für den Tanz schlechthin.

Vor diesem Hintergrund hat Prue Lang fünf Räume in einer Reihe entworfen. In jedem Raum gibt es eine Bank für die Zuschauer, deren Anzahl pro Durchgang auf 30 begrenzt ist. Kleine, sich perspektivisch verjüngende Fenster eröffnen dem Publikum einen Durchblick auf den nächsten Raum, der so wie eine Spiegelung des eigenen Raums wirkt. Neun Tänzer, die während der Vorstellung die Räume wechseln können, bewegen sich durch die Installation, an deren Ende ein Diaprojektor Bilder der Tänzer an die Wand wirft. Daß auch das Publikum umhergehen kann, um sich seinen Blickwinkel frei zu wählen, ist Prue Lang wichtig. “Jeder Zuschauer soll sich sein eigenes Zeitfenster bauen, durch das er auf die Performance blickt”, erzählt sie. Jeder der Tänzer habe seine eigene Zeitstruktur, die aus einer anfänglichen Improvisation heraus entwickelt wurde. An bestimmten Punkten gehe dann jeder einen anderen Weg durch das Labyrinth.

Ausgangspunkt für die Bewegungsfindung seien Träume der Tänzer gewesen, die sie aufgeriffen hätten. “Im Traum herrscht eine andere Zeit. Dinge erscheinen in einer anderen Chronologie, überlagern oder verschieben sich. Dem wollten wir in den Bewegungen ein Stück weit nachgehen.” Auch die unmittelbare Nähe zu den Tänzern kann die Zeitwahrnehmung der Zuschauer verändern. Erlebt man so manche Sequenzen intensiver als andere. Doch das Näher-dran-Sein im Labyrinth der sich gegenseitig beobachtenden Blicke birgt sowohl für das Publikum wie für die Tänzer Gefahren. Jeder muß seinen Schutzraum und seine Anonymität ein Stück weit verlassen, damit es zu einer Begegnung kommen kann. Daß das nicht jedem liegt, dessen ist sich Prue Lang bewußt. “Deshalb haben wir uns entschieden, daß es keinen direkten Kontakt zwischen den Tänzern und dem Publikum geben soll.”

Nach ihrer Ausbildung in Melbourne tanzte sie zunächst bei Meryl Tankards Australien Dance Theatre, bevor sie Mitte der neunziger Jahre nach Frankreich kam, um dort in renommierten Kompanien wie der Compagnie Cré-Ange und L’Esquisse zu tanzen. Doch bald schon hatte sie genug von den klischierten Rollenbildern, die im französischen Tanz nach wie vor hoch im Kurs stehen. Wie viele Geschichten, in denen sich Frauen an den Hals von Männern werfen, könne man als Frau im 21. Jahrhundert noch ertragen? Die Arbeit mit William Forsythe sei für sie nicht nur eine tänzerische, sondern auch eine intellektuelle Herausforderung. Forsythe habe ihr für ihre eigenen Arbeiten die Freiheiten gegeben, die sie brauchte. “Mach das, was du selbst gerne sehen möchtest”, sei sein Rat gewesen. Für die Abende mit Arbeiten von Ensemblemitgliedern hat sie in den vergangenen Jahren im Bockenheimer Depot schon zwei Installationen realisiert, die letzte zu Texten von Simone de Beauvoir.

Ende des Monats zeigt sie dort eine weitere ihrer Arbeiten. Die Videoinstallation “Screenplay” ist eine Zusammenarbeit mit dem Schriftsteller David le Barzic und der Medienkünstlerin Cindy Lee, in der es um die Übergänge zwischen den einzelnen Phasen des künstlerischen Schaffensprozesses gehen soll. Die Videoinstallation steht im Rahmen eines dreiteiligen Tanzabends, an dem Choreographien von Jone San Martin und Fabrice Mazliah (“Remote Versions”), Nathalie Thomas (“iii”) und Ayman Harper (Bye-bye Mingusblue”) zu sehen sein werden. In den Pausen und nach der Vorstellung wird zugleich eine Filminstaliation von Arnoud Noordegraaf gezeigt. Vorstellungen von “lnfinite Temporal Series” finden am 8. und 9. März um 19.30 und 20.00 sowie um 21.00 und 21.30 Uhr statt: Der choreographische Abend ist am 27. und 28. März um 20.00 und um 21.00 Uhr im Bockenheime Depot zu sehen. (Gerald Siegmund)