DIG 2015 - Colette Sadler/Stammer Productions: GEIST

World Premiere

This dance performance, inspired by the theme of animism, takes the form of a contemporary ritual articulating and subverting the relationship between the realms of living and dead matter, physicality and consciousness.

The performance takes place within an installation environment, in a setting that suggests hieratic space inspired by the appearance of iconostasis, or retablos found in churches.

By exhibiting printed wall panels depicting figurative imagery, it juxtaposes a combination of fragments from religious oil paintings and from contemporary photo journalism as examples of historical representation of animated bodies with the real time and space of live action. Oscillating between the imagined and real, the performers shift in and out of control in the construction and pursuit of being.

GEIST started out as collaboration between choreographer Colette Sadler and set designer Philine Rinnert. The artists integrate different media in the search for a performance concept fusing Installation and dance that could function within both theatre and exhibition space contexts.