manoeuvre_

A prop does not “mean” anything, but it plays its part in the construction of that which comes to us through the movement. The plank and the way in which it interacts with the bodies of the dancers can be approached “symbolically” but, in the main, can be viewed literally: body and object inform us of the relationship in between them, of the placement of the body in space and the ways in which it makes best use of it. If dance is a means of representation, then the literality of a body – something worked out through its relationship with an object – transforms the particulars that have to do both with the representative system itself, and with the prototypical symbolic relationships we have learned to see on stage.

Candy Carra and Chara Kotsali test things and are tested themselves in what is their first jointly-created choreographic piece. Their materials are to be found in the outputs produced by the dancing body, in pure movement – without the demands of a narrative form that would force us to read their on-stage partnership in some symbolic way. Their emancipation from such interpretative mechanisms is focused more on the “how” of their process rather than on providing explanations; that is to say, they urge us to think that if there is any “meaning” in dance, it is to be found in dance itself.