This new offering from choreographer Alexandra Waierstall, is deeply connected with the experience of the extraordinary times we are living during this ongoing post-pandemic moment and world wide turbulence with wars and resessions. As a choreographer, she has fined tuned a poetic and affecting way to engage us with seemingly contradictory and hard to name emotions, through exquisite collaborations which create a world both deeply experiential and thought provoking.
This is indeed the case for this ambitious group work: “IN THE HEART OF THE HEART OF THE MOMENT” started with a previous work “Bodies and Structure” (2019): this work was a live interaction between dancers and the “Arena”, a monumental sculpture created by the acclaimed American artist Rita McBride.
For this new group piece, the choreographer develops a method in which she uploads the material, the experience and knowledge gained in the encounter with the sculpture in an imaginary cloud and then downloads it again, this time not as a sculptural work, but as a dance piece.
At the core of this work is a transformation process calling to our hearts, real and symbolic. Here Alexandra Waierstall refers directly to two inspirations: the exiled Lebanese-American poet and visual artist Etel Adnan, author of “In the Heart of the Heart of another Country”, who herself revisited the title by writer William Gass with his landmark work “In the Heart of the Heart of the Country” (1968). A spiral of works connected by the desire to make us attend to ourselves.
Indeed, Waierstall here approaches the choreography as a navigation system for feeling, perception and connection, as a tool for renewal. Every movement reflects how our bodies are adjusting to the changing social structures. Something we have all experienced recently. Moreover, “IN THE HEART OF THE HEART OF THE MOMENT” is weaving together stunning performances, and an unravelling music score.
