"white on white" - Tokyo meets Zurich
Dance performance for five Asian dancers
With white on white Gisela Rocha completes the second part of her work with Asian dancers following „Bloom“. Whereas „Bloom“ delves inward to expose what normally is hidden, white on white moves into the infinite while being based on the duality of light and shadow. Apart from that white on white has to do with uninhibited imagination.
This new production has been inspired by Kazimir Malevich’s painting White on White (1918) and his exploration of spatial constraints.
Spatial dimensions have a direct influence on this piece of work and are in dialogue with the dance. Space is reduced to the maximum. It is also a metaphor for inner rooms created by the mind.
The explicit body language of the five Japanese dancers is accompanied by mezzo-soprano Sonoe Kato and by the electronic music of Chris Wiesendanger.
white on white was presented in Theater Winterthur on 30 April 2009 (premiere) and at Tanzhaus Zurich on 14, 16 and 17 May 2009
Have a look at the video for white on white with dancers Yukie Koji, Shiho Numata, Kenta Shibasaki, Takuro Kajiya and An-Chi Tsao.
Quotes:
There is constant change in which neither roles nor guiding themes or recurring forms of movement can be recognized. But there are again and again new approaches, a variety of dynamic movements that develop to the full and then ebb away, imaginative body sculptures and energetic outbreaks followed by total standstills.
Ursula Pellaton, Der Landbote, 2 May 2009
It is the continuous change between abstract body images, associative impressions and narrative moments that is so intriguingly irritating in «White on White». It takes but the tiniest change in a facial expression and a body sculpture suddenly becomes an individual in agony. Or a rather abstract pas-de-deux develops into a passionate love story. On the other hand the five dancers melt into just one figure, for instance when they roll up their trousers and synchronically move their naked legs in file (...) And when at the end mezzo-soprano Sonoe Kate raises her voice to sing a wonderfully melancholy song, this dance performance reaches a level of depth that one might have missed at times before.
Sabine Schulthess, NZZ, 16/17 May 2009