Performa 09: Solo + SoloShow ensemble

by Biba Bell

How does the diptych function in performance? Two pieces are not placed next to one another, they are necessarily separate in time, sequenced. One remains in memory, organizing with the force of its haunting. It is easy to see the first in the frame of a transposed singularity, but the second piece constantly speaks in relation to the ghosting of its predecessor. Watching SoloShow this weekend made me aware of translucently dowsed moments with considered temporal layering, as two dances subtly, thoughtfully and affectively began to mingle and resonate.

In an interview with PS 122 Maria Hassabi describes Solo and SoloShow as a landscape (the former) and a display (the latter). I began to sympathize with these conceptual descriptors as textures and frictions were produced in-between these terms. Time began to slow down as if to catch pace with its counterpart and then, under a swarming corridor of lights, the heat again began to rise, amplified by the electric promiscuity of this ritualized act of watching. We were not in the room alone together. The dances were talking to each other. The solo format was suddenly unraveled, and it became a duet. Little did I know while watching Hassabi’s Solo a few weeks ago that it was responding to a call from this future piece, and it enveloped further still into the coarse folds of the Turkish carpet. Along with the choreography we were a subtle, concert of pauses, adjustments, extensions. The sight of the single dancer wavered, edges blurred and caught pieces of that alternate landscape, giving rise to the thickness of an atmosphere that was produced through the interaction of these dances with light, sound, and the mass of the audience perceiving, looking, wondering and waiting ensemble.

“Here we are no longer in the domain of simple vibration, but that of resonance. There are thus two Figures coupled together. […] They do not merge with each other, but are rendered indiscernible by the extreme precision of the lines, which acquire a kind of autonomy in relation to the body, like a diagram whose lines would bring together nothing but sensations.” (Gilles Deleuze, Francis Bacon: The Logic of Sensation, 55)

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