O

Sonja Pregrad
performance

O arises from an interest in the geometry of plants and affects and the tension of the an/organic. It is based on the continuation of work with a team of performers, relying on the existing shared understanding of choreographic and performing work. Through the formality of the choreographic solutions, the affective intensity of the performance (through movement and voice), and the experiment with the intertwining of compositional forms of space, time and attention, choreography rests on a series of tasks, but without ending in fixity, leaving the performers room for making decisions, affects and forms.

Just as in spring the identical cycle of growth manifests itself diversely through soil, moss, grasses, flowering plants, trees, fulfilling different forms and vectors, but also pointing to a common driving force, I am interested in the possibility of a composite choreography of the collective body – the folklore of an/organic geometry (as collective collection-choreography of gestures). I want to open the question of choreography conceptually and methodologically towards the ruins of the anthropocentric architecture of viewing (immanent to theater as a medium).

Studying and taking over the qualities of movement (within) plants, such as symmetry, the relationship between horizontal and vertical (grounding and locomotion), cycles and their choreographic events (natural plastics of destruction: drought, fire, death of leaves, period of hibernation; and then budding, sprouting, growth , fattening fruits…) and ecosystem dependencies and interrelationships, dealing with the geometry that results in the rhythm (or is the result of the rhythm) of movement, I am interested in thinking of the performance as drag, or as a sub-oratory of plants – using pre-language or post-language (voice articulation beyond words, movement beyond dance), thereby destabilizing what the performance offers to the viewer, embodying the rootedness of the performance moment.

O continues thinking about the space of dance and choreography with questions, i.e. images of resistance, interconnectedness, destruction, sadness and mourning, paralysis and movement, tension of the anthropocentric position.