How close does something need to happen for me to feel it, to sense a connection or a responsibility? Choreographer Amparo Gonzalez Sola approaches these concerns by bringing our attention to small gestures, as she invites us to observe gestures as portals or possible connectors.
"In this performance, performers and audience share the space, visible to each other. The choreography emerges from the gestures of the audience: they are echoed, stretched, reversed, and reshaped. Through this, the work invites us to reflect on what it means to bear witness. How is the performer’s body connected to that of the spectator? How does the gaze move between them? How far - or how close - are they to each other?
In a time of image overload - where we doomscroll, often disconnected from what we see - While Taking Shape invites us to slow down, to notice what is small, to sense stillness as movement, to hear what’s quiet."
Fransien van der Putt
***Critic’s Choice Theaterkrant on While Taking Shape***
As with previous works, the light and space have their own trajectory to embody the themes of the work. Working with peripheral vision and indirect light, the audience are enveloped inside the one space for the audience and performers to inhabit together. Barely perceptible expansion and contraction infused a soft sense of movement and breath in the space and plays with the physical distance between the performers and audience. Gradually focusing on the centre space, where the dancers are situated as bodies to be read, taking the audience with them in the multiple shadows.
Concept and direction: Amparo González Sola
Performance and research: Rita Bifulco, Amador Alina Folini, Leandro de Souza, Amparo González Sola
Sound design: Nahuel Cano
Light design: Vinny Jones
Dramaturgical advice: Bek Berger
Technical Producer: Pablo Fontdevila
Photographs: Alex Heuvink
Production: Dansateliers
Co-production: Dansateliers, Spring Performing Arts Festival, Frascati Producties.
Support: BAU AIR (NL), Greenhouse (NL), ROOMS Festival (NL), workspacebrussels (BE), Tanzhaus Zürich(CH), CAMPUS Paulo Cunha e Silva (PT).
Made possible by: Fonds Podiumkunsten
Premier 24 May, 2025. SPRING Performing Arts Festival
