"W - double you"
Premiere: April. 2005 / tanzhaus nrw, Düsseldorf
Duration: 60 Min.
Choreografie: Morgan Narrt
Visual art: Naoko Tanaka
Dance: Nina Patricia Hänel, Coralie Ladame
Light: Marco Wehrspann, Marc Brodeur
Composition: Jörg Ritzenhoff
Costume: Jens Hesse
Co-produced by the tanzhaus nrw, Düsseldorf and the Grand Théâtre de la Ville de Luxembourg.
Promoted by the Office for Culture of the state capital Düsseldorf, the Kunststiftung NRW and Fonds Darstellende Künste.
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Two dancers clothed in white move in a small black space that resembles a photographic darkroom, so the spectators can concentrate their attention on the two figures as if they are watching through a magnifying glass. The dance is not a duet in the narrow sense, but rather a curious play on the number two and all of its implications: as a doubling of identity, as opposition, and as a symbol of ambivalence, dualism and complementarity. The main emphasis of this play on the number two, for me, is to create a dialogue between western and eastern ways of thinking, between differentiating and connecting patterns of thought. According to eastern philosophy, these two individuals are essentially the same; that is, two phenomena can be observed in reality, but their fundamental being is nevertheless a united whole. The dance shifts between these two opposing poles, as it represents both a confrontation of the incompatible and the achievement of unified perfection. It is important to me to integrate these two positions in reality. In front of the supposedly empty background between these two figures the colourful spectrum of diversity is thus illuminated.
Tour
27. Oct 2005; Grand Theatre de la Ville, Luxembourg
3. & 4. June 2005; Orangerie im Volksgarten, Köln
28., 29., 30. April & 01. May 2005; Tanzhaus nrw, Düsseldorf
Press
Dance and its Questioning Duality
Alter ego and ambiguity dominate the most recent piece by two unique artists, two protagonists united in an incomparable experience: a choreographer chooses to collaborate with a sculptor and painter; the dance and its silhouette emerge out of the mysterious formulation of questions. Like Cassiopeia, the ambiguous constellation that we can be read in one direction the same as another, it represents the doubling, the shadow, the counterpart of the self: that is what constitutes the atmosphere of this new piece, which was written together by four hands for two bodies. A hybrid piece with two heads, which was conceived by the choreographer Morgan Nardi and the sculptor Naoko Tanaka. An unusual encounter, which already began with the previous piece by this two-headed hydra, “Songofmyself” in 2003, continues here during an unusual exhibition of dance and video, sculptured space and dancing bodies.
Captivate the Eye
Two dancers clothed in white in a completely darkened, impenetrable black space. The spectator employs extreme concentration to attempt to focus his eyes on these barely perceptible bodies, whose contours rise up and are gradually exposed or presumably unveiled thanks to the spectator’s exertions… The forms slowly emerge, assert themselves, rise up, and in the process they go a long way towards creating a strange, spectral atmosphere, like something from the realm of the supernatural or the virtual. As incomprehensible phantoms, magical and magnetic ectoplasms, the dancers move according to their creators, who are united here through their scenographical spiritual affinity as well as their geographical proximity: Nardi and Tanaka work in the productive contemporary art movement in Düsseldorf, and their artistic work is interdisciplinary, multidisciplinary, and all-encompassing. The dance emerges, doubled, producing the sensation of vertigo with an echo, like a mirror image or a shadow. In striving towards remanence, reproduction, and doubling every gesture becomes a representation of the other without ever being a representation or reproduction of the other. Industrial secret, alchemy, handwriting of one and the other – this dreamlike choreography is a doubling of identity as well as a metamorphosis: ambivalence, ambiguity, appearance – everything comes together here in order for the real to merge with the unreal world, and far from its external appearance the end product takes stock of the cultural blending and crossing between the Orient and the Occident here. This crossing between the two is the bipolarity, the twin community, the permanent state of transition. Like a dialogue between dance and trance, between realm image and artificial image, video or digital, the piece conveys the impression of a slow glide, through which our understanding of time and space is overwhelmed by a disorientation that deceives the senses. The spectator does not trust his eyes. It is a waking dream that one sees in breathtaking dream images.
Geneviève Charras, La Voix du Luxembourg, 22 October 2005