Since 2011, Pierre Godard and Liz Santoro have been collaborating closely on the creation of choreographic machines that attempt to thwart the tropisms of our attention. The singularity of their respective artistic pathways have brought them to elaborate systems of writing centered on movement and text that, in revealing underlying processes — mechanisms of power and seduction, organization of social space, operating procedures of the nervous system — propose to the spectator the experience of perceptive incongruity.
Their work has been presented in France, Europe, and North America. They created three group pieces, We Do Our Best (2012), Relative Collider (2014), and For Claude Shannon (2016) and two pieces in situ, Watch It (2012) and Quarte (2014). Their work has been nominated several times at the Bessie Awards, and Watch It received a Bessie in 2013 in the category “Outstanding Production for a work at the forefront of contemporary dance”.
(Fr) Lors de la création de Maps en 2017, les deux chorégraphes se trouvent confrontés à une étrange et délicieuse controverse, à un problème de pas et de temps. La moitié des danseurs comptait le rythme à la manière des musiciens classiques (ils comptaient le « un » sur le beat), tandis que la seconde moitié comptait sur le up- beat, à la manière des musiciens de jazz. Cette différence, indépassable pour les interprètes tant elle affectait tous les aspects de leur capacité à concevoir, puis réaliser leurs mouvements, est le point de départ de Noisy Channels.
Cette situation – paradoxale s’il en est – les amène à investir, sous l’angle textuel et par le biais de la voix préalablement enregistrée des danseurs, la matière des paradoxes. Il en existe un vaste nombre mais qu’il s’agisse de logique ou de probabilité, d’économie ou de théorie des jeux, de physique ou de philosophie, la mécanique du paradoxe c’est d’aller contre le sens commun, de mettre au jour la complexité du réel, de nous donner l’expérience de la limite de ce que nous sommes capables de concevoir, d’ouvrir la possibilité d’une exploration nouvelle.
Avec cette nouvelle machine chorégraphique, Liz Santoro et Pierre Godard entendent ainsi sonder la profondeur des paradoxes et approfondir leurs recherches autour du lien entre mouvement et texte, en s’appuyant sur la musicalité de la voix.
(Fr) Conception Liz Santoro et Pierre Godard
Musique Greg Beller
Avec Matthieu Barbin, Jacquelyn Elder et Cynthia Koppe
Coproduction La Pop, CDCN Atelier de Paris.
Liz Santoro et Pierre Godard sont artistes associés au CDCN Atelier de Paris
The idea that language would be physically organized in the biological space of the brain encourages us to push deeper in our work with points of contact between movement and text, but also with sound and architectural spaces, through this shared property: deployment. If it is possible to write the movement of the body in space on stage, we could by analogy, mentally project the text on one of these maps showing the unfolded surface of the cortex and vice versa, then use this correspondence as composition material which can then be activated in real-time during the performance.
Design: Liz Santoro and Pierre Godard
Music: Greg Beller
Costumes: Reid Bartelme
Light: Ongoing
With Matthieu Barbin, Lucas Bassereau, Jacquelyn Elder, Maya Masse, Cynthia Koppe et Charlotte Siepiora
For Claude Shannon uses grammatical dependencies between words in a statement from computer science pioneer Claude Shannon to recover a linguistic structure that, in turn, generates inexhaustible possibilities for choreographic sequences. Twenty-four discreet movement “atoms” for arms and legs serve as a movement lexicon from which a fixed number of inputs is randomly chosen each time the piece is performed. For each performance, dancers must assemble and learn one particular choreographic outcome among 29 billions possible that cannot be repeated. They rely on the perfect assimilation of the structure of the text and the intimacy they have acquired with one another. Engaging the resources of both their working and long-term memory, uncovering to the audience the pronouncement of the unknown, concealing the predicaments of entropy, they relentlessly switch circuits.
For Claude Shannon was created on January 22, 2016, at the CDC Atelier de Paris
Design: Liz Santoro and Pierre Godard
Music: Greg Beller
Costumes: Reid Bartelme
Light: Sarah Marcotte
With Marco D’Agostin, Cynthia Koppe, Liz Santoro and Teresa Silva
Quarte Works on the tension that exists between the intrinsic attributes of an object, in this case a landscape, and the symbolic arrangement built around it. We conventionally install bodies in this device to reveal the sediments of natural and artificial.
Piece created on the 29th and 30th of August 2014 at 7:30 pm as part of the festival between courtyard and gardens
Choreography: Liz Santoro with Tove Brunberg and Sherwood Chen
Artistic collaboration: Pierre Godard
Relative Collider is a machine that others us the opportunity to see, to measure, to quantify, to exchange, to experience information between nervous systems. Like the rings of particle accelerators, its structure holds value only insofar as it allows for the creation of an experience and production of specific results.
Relative Collider works on the physics of attention; a collision of watching.
Relative Collider seeks a point of contact between movement and text, where they each have the sole purpose of their own performance in front of an audience. Atoms subjected to di erent force elds, recombined into molecules that precipitate or dissolve under the attention of the viewer. Organic chemistry.
Relative Collider was created on 11 March 2014 at the Théâtre de Vanves as part of the Artdanthé Festival
Design: Liz Santoro and Pierre Godard
Sound: Brendan Dougherty
Costumes: Reid Bartelme
With Pierre Godard, Cynthia Koppe, Liz Santoro, and Stephen Thompson
Watch It is a machine to alter our perceptual hierarchies. Here, the spectacular emerges randomly on the plot of a noisy public space while motifs – very written but maintained at the threshold of their silence – unfold unnoticed. Intimate outdoor performance, fortuitous mathematics, Watch It offers its system of filters and mirrors to destabilize the tropisms of our attention. Choreography for the retina and vestibule. Conservation of energy. Increased disorder.
A piece created and presented at the Museum of Arts and Design from 15 to 17 November 2012, then at the Centre Pompidou Metz on 12 and 13 April 2014
Watch It, in the version presented at the Museum of Arts and Design in New York, received a Bessie Award in 2013.
Choreography / Conception: Liz Santoro and Pierre Godard
Musician: on the spot
Dancer: Reid Bartelme
Performers: on-site (6)