PARASOL Logbook IV
PARASOL – a dance group of TQW is a hybrid artistic further training project aimed at young dancers. Each year, two renowned choreographers develop a piece with a group of five young dancers selected by them, for three months each. The PARASOL Logbook provides insights into the group’s working processes at irregular intervals. The texts by Gianna Virginia Prein and photos by Marcella Ruiz-Cruz have accompanied the rehearsals for the performances with Ian Kaler in the spring of 2022 and with Alix Eynaudi in the autumn of 2022. In addition, they document and portray the project and its participants: Alex Bailey, Camilla Schielin, Júlia Rúbies Subirós, Shahrzad Nazarpour, Theresa Scheinecker.
05/12/2022
Decisions regarding the piece are partly made together, partly by each person individually. Which material should be audio-recorded, printed or worn? Alix supplies her costumes from the past eleven years, her books and references. It’s like a bubble of Alix’s collected props, in which Camilla, Shahrzad, Alex, Theresa and Júlia are free to develop their own ideas, and by means of which they become a colourful whole from a cumulation of solos.
09/12/2022
The solos have been developed, rehearsed, put together, recorded individually. Taking notes on each run-through, each segment, Alix directly shares them with the group. Considered in isolation, they seem vague, but in conjunction with the movements they are extremely precise. Addressing an in-between quality that is being examined with great sensitivity, they go something like this:
“This is the end, so better be good” [Alix laughs]
“Pas dans le vague – the eyes”
“You are very much with your hands, also think of your elbows”
In addition to specific parts of the body, it’s often a matter of using the space immediately surrounding the moving limbs and of diversifying the movements as precisely as possible.
“It’s not a research, it’s a task”
“Don’t present everything in front”
“In the middle of a movement, twist the reference you’re calling”
“You are not dancing whatever but precisely whatever”
12/12/2022
The elbows are lifted asymmetrically, muscle groups are tensed or relaxed, the mouths are opened, the eyes focused. My eyes, on the other hand, cannot quite catch up with the fast bits, what I have only just seen quickly fades again. The various solos play with the time required for anticipating, and with the unexpected, the surprise effect.
“Don’t be polite with the music”
“Ça j’aime bien”
“Can we try to get a stop there?…”
“…or the idea of a stop”
“Resist the music”
The theme of the rehearsal itself shimmers through Han-Gyeol Lie’s and Paul Kotal’s musical montage: finger exercises and pianoforte techniques build a soundscape that deconstructs itself through manipulation or omission. A bug in the program gets to Paul more than once – not the kind of deconstruction that is currently required.
Apart from the duet, the few encounters are unaffected by each other in their diversity. Unaffected, but nonetheless noticeably approximated by the various methodologies of the past months of rehearsals, starting with the mindfulness exercises of the first production.
As we are folding the leaflets, we talk about other projects that run in parallel, have to run. “Je l’ai!”, Alix shouts at some point. – “What?” – “Money!” An email with the approval of a research grant, for which she interviewed the same morning. Jubilation. That was quick! “Well”, Alix smiles, “I worked one and a half years for it…”
We walk over to Hall G. Loaded with costumes and props, we set up backstage. The last suspended lighting trusses are being mounted on the stage.