LIKI - creation 2009

Movement exists if one references it.
I stop and the present passes on
This is not an escape, as I do not look at the past, I am only interested in the path ahead and what will make me live.

Specificity and theme of the piece
With this piece, Pulx continues its research on the relationships between dance, image and sound, with the same artistic team. But in contrast to Syntonie, where the three artists are on stage along with the audience; Liki is a more standard performance, as the dancer performs alone on stage. The photographer and the musician interpret their "scores" during each performance, but they remain invisible to the audience. The space is bordered by a disc on the floor and a cyclorama at the back, where the projection of the photographs takes place. The sound spatialisation system is composed of hundreds of tiny speakers placed throughout the stage and the audience.

To build Liki, we were particularly interested in exploring lines of perception, as they are the most creative ones. They drive us to take risks, they make us live. In continuous interaction, the three media create several lines, each following the other - bouncing, sliding, floating - to draw a map of a multitude of lines and paths. Searching together, with our media and our feelings, we wanted to compose with the different flows and to play with fragments of movements, images, sounds and lights, to eventually create the impression, for the audience, to experience an intense and surprising travel. Liki is a 40 minute show that engages all ages from 5 to 105 years old. The scenic approach may destabilise at first, but quickly draws smiles and dreams.

Three media in continuous interaction

Liki's dance is written using the music of gesture, with a touch of pantomime. It interacts in a coherent way with situations created by the projection of photographs and the diffusion of the sounds. Through the construction of a bizarre and lunar character, the dance is a progression following different pathways, directed by the diffusion of sound and the projection of photographic images. The character bounces off various events without ever sticking with them and continuously transforms himself. Between naivity and perplexity, the piece provokes, suggests and opens the door of imagination. This dance, riddled with cracks and holes, is above all lively, generous and evokes a perpetual "forward impulse".

The photographs come from a preliminary shoot, using a digital camera and a pinhole box, built especially for this piece. The pinhole photographs help us to depart from reality, to deconstruct the landscapes and to rebuild in a mess organised around vanishing points. The images appear in various formats and locations, for a variable duration, preventing the viewer from being lulled into the habit of a linear rhythm. The photographer worked on the memory, this way of perceiving the world through its fragments, seeking for the perception to prime over the imitation, to provoke a loss of reference, which plunges the spectator in the sensation more than in the analysis.

The music is composed of many materials: concrete and abstract sounds, voices, rhythms and spaces, so many interleaved strings that weave the sounding pathway. Various sources inspired it, such as traditional music, environmental sounds and rhythmic processes. Here the stage is approached as a topophony, which means that bodies in motion travel into a sound-field, these voyages producing traces in the sound and in the memory of listeners. The proposed approach for the sound design is particularly innovative for a dance performance. It relies on the achievement of a specific device which allows to very precisely arrange, in space and in time, a multitude of specific sounds. This device derives from the s0undb1ts, in collaboration with the Real Time Musical Interaction research and development team at Ircam - Centre Pompidou, who originally developed it. We invite you to visit the s0undb1ts blog if you would like to know more about it :
http://s0undb1ts.org

Cast
Choreography and dance: Elsa Decaudin
Photographic projection: Bastien Defives
Music and lighting: Jean-Philippe Lambert
Project Manager: Hélène Sorin

Dramaturgy (two days during the Looping project): Jutta Hell

S0undb1ts system for sound spatialisation (version 10): Norbert Schnell, Emmanuel Flety and Jean-Philippe Lambert (Real Time Musical Interactions - Ircam - Centre Pompidou).
Thanks to Robin Minard and Roland Cahen.
Realisation: PulX at la Tannerie (thanks to N-ZO).

Partners and Sponsors
Producer: Pulx association
Co-producers: Uzès danse, choreographic centres of Uzège, Gard and Languedoc Roussillon (France), TanzWerkstatt Berlin (Germany) and O Espaço do Tempo (Portugal). Liki participates in the Looping project, funded by the European Union cultural program.
Production support: la Chartreuse de Villeneuve lez Avignon - CNES (national centre for performance writing) and DRAC Languedoc-Roussillon.
Collaboration: Sound spatialisation system designed with the Real Time Musical Interactions team at Ircam - Centre Pompidou
Supporters: Kawenga (Montpellier), La Tannerie (Barjols) and Contre-Champ (Arvieu).
Thanks to CCN (national choreographic centre) of Montpellier and ATS (Aveyron).
Funders: French Ministry of Culture, CNC Dicréam, Languedoc-Roussillon region, Hérault county, Aveyron county mission for culture and Montpellier city.