Opportunity
Project content
In composing 'Opportunity', Reto Stadelmann has initiated a new type of cultural event bringing together live music, electronic music and dance within a 3-D sound system. It allows the audience to become part of the performance and to express their responses to its music and dances through their own movements. 'Opportunity' enables people of all ages, temperaments and body types to respond to its choreography by using spontaneous gestures create something new. This involves moments of uncertainty and chance which carry with them both risk and enormous potential. Participating in a unique collective experience transforms the challenge into a particular pleasure for all concerned.
Approaching 'Opportunity' requires openness, a sense of community and a readiness by all participants to take risks in order to reap rewards.
© Jörg Hejkal
Project aims
'Opportunity' is a pilot project for the development of a new social dance form which actively involves the audience in the action using contemporary music. The aim is to stimulate the audience to interact with the performing artists while allowing them to experience the performance as both a cultural and social experience. Participation by a mixed audience comprising people of all ages, temperaments and fitness levels involves both risk but also the potential, through spontaneous gestures, to create something new. This in turn signifies common experience and pleasure. These ever-changing dynamic relations allow people to perceive both similarities and contrasts through which they can come closer together and whose acceptance is fundamental to life in a modern society.
Components
'Opportunity' brings together social interaction, composition, musical performance, choreography and dance, staging, sound synthesis and venue acoustics in an artistic whole. An intensive process of creative collaboration led to the production of a 60-minute original musical score for amplified musical ensemble and multi-channel tape, choreography and an extensive sound installation using a sound dome. This is a high-tech device for dividing sounds spatially developed by the Institut für Musik und Akustik at the Zentrum für Kunst- und Medientechnologie Karlsruhe (ZKM). Beneath this array of several high-performance loudspeakers, audience members were encouraged to move about freely, inspired by the sounds drifting around them.
Artistic inspiration
'Opportunity's' artistic and educational inspirations are closely entwined. For both composer Reto Stadelmann and choreographer Stephen Wynne, working in art-related and social areas are key priorities.
Stephen Wynne uses dance as a means of creating links between people across cultural, economic, ethnic and other barriers. His choreography is based on cyclical dynamic motion. His challenge was to sustain this throughout the performance and make it accessible to a dancing audience.
© Jörg Schirner
Composer Reto Stadelmann is similarly committed to the social aspects of his work. He is especially interested in collaborating with non-professionals and in issues of musical creativity in the context of cultural education. With his unusual projects, he seeks out opportunities to promote social activities which expose broad sections of the 'non-artistic' public to a sensual and artistic experience. This was the motivation behind 'Opportunity', whose tailor-made composition was the nucleus for its choreographic elements. The music invites participants to react to a variety of social experiences and emotions through the medium of dance, and, from an initial sense of heaviness and tension, to begin to experience a lightness of being.
Educational approach
'Opportunity' uses participation to help people overcome their initial fears not just about modern music and contemporary dance but also about the use of improvisation as an artistic technique. The project brings participants of different ages, temperaments and social groups together onstage to share not just an artistic but also a social and cultural experience, allowing them to recognise their similarities and differences. Opportunity sets out to dissolve the barriers between stage and auditorium by allowing audience members to participate in a physical, even intimate way. The music and choreography allows audience members to explore their individual means of expression and become one with the professional performers.
Reach
The project appeals to many people and age groups, providing as it does a sheltered framework within which people of all ages and physical conditions can express themselves in movement. While requiring no special dance techniques on their part, the performance allows them to communicate interactively with professionals and fellow-audience members alike.
Success
'Opportunity' was an outstanding event in a class of its own. It premiered with two sell-out performances which received an
extremely positive audience reaction. The project also featured in the TV documentary on electronic music by Westdeutscher Rundfunk titled
Wellenlängen – Momente Elektronischer Musik.
Text © Tonchalet GmbH