Had the opportunity to speak with Jordan Fuchs today about his upcoming performance at Sushi, called Thicket. I just realized I didn’t ask him where the title came from, but as I think about his descriptions, it’s making sense to me.
This performance is set in the round and is the second evening length project he has done in this setting. Jordan said that in our lives, we perceive information from all directions at the same time, not just what’s right in front of us. He is interested in exploring this idea in performance – having all the channels open not just focusing straight ahead.
The dancers move among the audience and this has to do with his study of kinesthetic empathy. Now this starts getting kinda deep, but stay with me. He made it understandable. Jordan says “Our bodies empathetically respond when they are near other bodies. Our reactions are different if the artist is near you as opposed to far away on a proscenium stage.” He believes that we learn from being near other bodies in a way that we don’t when they are far away.
If you are feeling the bodies flying through the air right next to you, it makes sense that your experience of the show will be quite different than if they are yards and yards away from you on a stage.
Jordan wants to move contemporary dance away from just being a visual phenomenon. He wants to communicate the actual experience of moving through time and space. He calls it “near space relationships.”
One of the coolest aspects of the show is that each audience member wears their own headset. Music composer, Andy Russ, has different mics set up to record different sounds during the show. For example, the parabolic mic will pick up individual sounds like breathing or a grunt. The boom mic will share the larger collective sounds. Andy then samples the sounds the performers are making in real time and layers that with pre-recorded piano music.
Here’s where it gets even more interesting…he has also pre-recorded the dance movements in different environments and with different numbers of people. So you may be watching them jump in front of you, but hearing it as if it were on grass. Or you’re watching 4 people but only hear the footsteps of one. It’s a hyper real experience.
And what’s also very interesting is that the performers only hear the music. They don’t hear all the other stuff that the audience does. So the performer’s experience is entirely different from the audiences’. He is trying to challenge the notions of what a communal performance is about. He wants to create disorientation within a dance performance.
I call it parallel realities (I mean aren’t we each hearing a different voice and tune from one another all the time anyway?). This really highlights that experience, doesn’t it?
Oh and the name? Well, I envision all the bodies and the breathing representing a thicket of trees. But maybe I’m way off here and Jordan will set me straight.
