A deambulatory performance by Noémie Lafrance
traveling The Bentway
June 7 & 8
6pm & 8pm
Celebrating the re-purposed architecture of the Gardner via The Bentway, this site-specific performance re-envisions the site as a group navigation, questioning urban infrastructure as a new form of political power and social design. It invites performers and audiences to participate in an exercise in psychogeography that explores how our navigation of architecture and urban infrastructures is choreographed. The piece emerges from collectively scripted instructions to be enacted by a group of 60 performers and the public while traveling The Bentway site.
Dérives Choreographic Instructions:
1. Little Narratives
- Embody (and sound) a poetic phrase with your whole body;
- Without miming or using any surrounding objects;
- Find a repetitive pattern or consistent feeling in it – keep repeating and deepening it.
Examples of poetic phrases:
- Arms dripping oil
- Squeaky hips
- Spy toe
- Right shoulder telling secrets
- Only one high heel shoe
- Octopus descending stairs
- Magnetic elbows
2. Chaos into unison
- Make a movement (and sound) on 4 counts and repeat it;
- If you see a movement you like – copy it;
- If a movement around you becomes dominant, follow it instead.
Theory of Dérives
Check out the following links to learn more about the choreographic theory of Dérives.