Lebenswelt

“Lebenswelt”, a work by the YELP Dance Company and choreographed by Mariela Nestora, follows the tale of a duet in a space where living forms meld with video projections. It is the last part in the S trilogy, which was inspired by the philosophy of Edmund Husserl, the founder of phenomenology, who uses the term “Lebenswelt” to define the world which we each perceive around us. In this work, then, the worlds of the two dancers coexist with a third: the world of the audience.

This looks ahead to the future of the work, which YELP aim to develop into an installation, an undertaking in which Nestora’s collaborations with the team members who designed the costumes, sound, space and video as well as the dancers are of the utmost importance. Which is why one aim of the entire S series has been to mould and develop a central concept through the interaction of various media with the complex corporeality the dancers are invited to explore.

Within this framework, the coexistence of the two (or more) subjective worlds presented in “Lebenswelt” ushers in moments of paradox which generate doubt, decay and perhaps fear, too, of the Other—of difference. There is no shortage of conflict and misunderstanding between the two protagonists, but there is also compassion, tenderness and hope. Ultimately, their physical and psychological behavior is defined by their need for a shared reality, and they often seem willing to abandon their personal freedoms in exchange for feeling safer, more replete. For as the choreographer herself suggests, might ‘we’ brook fewer questions that ‘I’?