A remarkable work inspired by the elemental liquid, Water. With a stunning, real Water-fall-backdrop, digital images and design, and intricate, astonishingly fluid movement, this is work informed by the many ways that water moves...toward, through, around and away...from land, our bodies, our lives… deluge, drought, power, beauty, sacred, desecrated… the stain left behind... Inspired by the book Sensitive Chaos: The Creation of Flowing Forms in Water & Air, by Theodor Schwenk,
PRESS
"Water flows. The river runs quietly, carrying images on its surface. A wave rolls and takes pebbles with it, foaming onto the shore. Rain runs down walls and falls as densely as a wall. Dance Theatre of Ireland has used flowing water to inspire the creation of seductive pictures.
Not one minute was wasted on Friday night in the Kleines Haus. Six dancers move swiftly and stand motionless in various configurations, they appear and disappear. In Robert Connor & Loretta Yurick’s choreography, they are always both the carrier and the carried, wave and stone, water and wall, swimming against the current that is themselves. They touch one another, take up and carry the impulse, but still remain separate and individual. In this way, the movements become unrepeatable and unique. The music and the video also build a discreet space, through which a wave rolls, just at the right moment.
WaterMark ...puts others in the shade and shows what is missing from other pieces: consistently accomplished.”
Uwe Salzbrenner, Sachsische Zeitung, Dresden
It is the unpredictability and impermanence of a collection of short movement phrases that resonates most. Fluid in style and in time they seduce the eye as easily as water, as bodies come together and part in irregular intervals and patterns...
This work reflects Schwenk's belief that forms arise through the interplay of currents and their forces, and the motive and movement are well matched here."
M. Seaver, The Irish Times
"...extraordinary...beautiful to look at...backdrops were fantastic, the huge breaker breaking was quite terrifying... "
Peter O'Brien, The View RTÉ One
"…incredibly inventive, beautifully put together... lovely…”
“…amazingly well imagined backdrops, with rain coming down at the back...the water feature was beautiful….the quality of the sound was so very detailed and theatrical…“...astonishing and moving .......beautiful”
"...there was a lovely part where they used the backdrop to project a rocky foreshore, with beautifully draped bodies morphing on and off the rock...on stage, people falling, one, then another, then 2 or 3 altogether...being helped back up...it was astonishing, really moving ......such a feeling of solidarity.”
Jim Lockhart, The View RTÉ One
From moments of standing on a shore… sea rushing in and out, sea weed and sand ...curling, twisting…forms begotten of motion. In one space many directions rise and fall, chase and recede, boundary surfaces sliding tactile and tenuous; furtively swirling.
Deep brown stain of countless high tides on granite, evidence of time itself, repeated and relentless. Detritus driftwood, what memories wash up on the shore, when evanescence is the essence of the present, a past to which we cling? Like so many watermarks...memories imbedded...unique currency in the market of meaning...shimmer white light briefly...plumb cold waters again.
Swept away...no warning of the violence malevolence, voices gulping frightful silence...falling...to be caught. Anger grieving bursts the levy of reason, heaving downtown drowning.
Stretched skinned soul, broken cracked bone dry...without within wilted and withered, an ocean of tears, spring tide of sorrow. Dropless not for want of prayer.
Purity seeped in mystery and rite, powerful, fragile, luminescent. An impressionable substance…our very nature...nine months floating...passed through a liquid phase. Elemental flow courses still through cell and marrow.
Premiered November 9, 2005 The Pavilion Theatre, Dun Laoghaire
WaterMark
Choreography: Robert Connor & Loretta Yurick. Original Music: Rory Pierce. Additional Music: David Yoken.
Sound Sculpture: Linda O’Keeffe. Dancers: Stephane Hisler, Styliani Lamprinou, Melanie Nezereau, Hildur Ottarsdottir & Karl Paquemar. Lighting: Mark Galione. Costumes: Veerle Dehaene. Video: Suzanne Mooney
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