Ensemble
London, 2023
LED, Sound, Code
The human figure and its movement through time and space is at the heart of all of UVA’s work. Though they often explore this through immersive installations and dynamic environments that centre the body of the visitor, transforming the gallery into a kind of stage for an improvised performance, Ensemble brings the figure itself into focus. This newly created audiovisual work is a three-part study looking at the evolving relationship between bodily movement, gesture and our species’ sense of musicality. The work begins with the notion that the body itself is an instrument attuned to its environment.
Weaving together new research emerging from the fields of biology, neuroscience, anthropology, and musicology, Ensemble examines the body/music relationship throughout various stages of human development—from hunting and gathering and the advent of bipedalism, to the cyclical, repetitive movements of the agricultural and industrial revolutions, on to the twitchy micro-gestures that characterise our sedentary lifestyles today. Paying homage to early motion studies like those of Eadweard Muybridge and Etienne-Jules Marey, as well as the experimental films of Dziga Vertov, Ensemble places movement, gesture, and tempo centre stage, distilled through the sequenced, serialised montage.
Choreographed by Dana Gingras of Animals of Distinction, with whom UVA previously collaborated on the multimedia dance performance Creation Destruction, the dancers’ movements evoke the way the human body is shaped by its environment, even (and perhaps especially) when that environment is man-made. In the accompanying score by composer Roger Tellier-Craig, a musical language emanates from the physicality of the body and its movements, paying particular attention to the role of breath, rhythm, repetition and the inherent patterns of locomotion.
Run time: 8 minutes
Choreography by Dana Gingras of Animals of Distinction
Sound design by Roger Tellier-Craig
Commissioned by 180 Studios
Film by Matt Watt
Images 2 & 3 by Jack Hems
Images 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9 10 & 11 by Sandra Ciampone
