We present a risky proposal: sharing with you, the audience, a series of stage actions which are new and which we are still discovering as we go along. In fact, we do things that are familiar: lace up

our shoes, read a book, listen to music with headphones, walk, rest, quarrel, hide, celebrate a goal, hum a song, dance... But today these actions are composed, they occupy spaces and have different times. Their meanings are altered. And you, observing them from your seat, must give form and meaning to this moment. And with your gaze you create the necessary tension so that, here and now, a new dimension opens: the stage dimension.

 “What is the purpose of doing what we do?”
When I prepare a didactic response: “To play, imagine, to have adventures, to discover, to try new ways of doing by getting the body moving”, I see that the response does not motivate them at all, and the fact is that they are already experts in play, complicity, evasion, and the effervescence of the present moment.
This would be more of a challenge for adults...
In fact, the challenge for this wonderful group of youngsters has been to maintain their focus and get into a movement proposal to explore it. In the world of instantaneousness in which we are immersed, it is especially difficult to relate the idea of creative play with the idea of development.

We are using dance, dance as an artistic language which focuses on the body, on the body and its expanded expressiveness. This is what this residence has been about.

It has also been about the coming together of two generations relating to each other like cat and dog, where the cat is the expert in play, provoking, escaping and the dog is the expert in observation, permanence, presence and strength. The meeting between both occurs during a few moments which are magical and valuable. Only the pressure of a public presentation of the work that we are carrying out places the group on alert and makes them aware that the game goes on for more than a few short minutes. Now the challenge is served!

We share different stage devices with the public, different organised “games”, now as scenes. We use the moment to experience what the scene IS. This piece of ground that takes on meaning when someone is seated before it and watching. At my insistence they take ownership of what they do, I have often repeated to the group that it is not necessary to go looking for movements that do not belong to them at all, it is not necessary to stop being themselves in order to explore new things, it is necessary to rescue the movements that are their own, to become aware and from that moment on play and expand their possibilities. The materials of these artistic works are the bodies, their movements, some day-to-day elements and a microphone to give them the floor. The tools that help us give diverse forms to this austere material are space and time. Two such essential tools that are everywhere, whatever the time and therefore do not need to be managed. Just like in Sesame Street, we practice up, down, forwards, backwards, middle, diagonal, parallel, to the windows, to the wall, the ceiling, the floor… big, small, slow, very slow, fast, stand still, ... repeat, ... with the difference that now these youngsters pass all this information through their own bodies to play consciously, which is a new and complex learning process.

Welcome to the mystery of not looking at ourselves while playing a game in which we feel vulnerable!”

Silvia Sant Funk, choreographer