murmuration is a duet for a dancer and a sound artist. It is an immersive movement and sound performance. The dancer’s repetitive movements are picked up by a microphone and sent to the sound artist, who modifies it live and diffuses it to the dancer and the audience through individual sets of headphones. The dancer’s movement choices respond to the sounds produced, creating an information loop, a perennial mechanism. The dancer and the sound artist become nodes in a network of interdependence between sound and movement, an organism. The sounds produced echo those of natural phenomena, while the movement material, guided by pure intention, magnetizes those who witness. The audience is invited to witness this exchange, listen deeply to this soundscape and enter a state of meditation.
The title comes from the phenomenon involving birds: “At sunset, huge groups of starlings take to the sky, swooping and swirling into spheres, planes and waves. The phenomenon is called a murmuration, and it’s named after the noise that is made by the many flapping wings of a group of starlings in flight.”
murmuration is an attempt to open a discourse about human’s place within the vast mosaic of nature and existence. With the aid of technology, the performance’s aim is to talk about the infinitely big and the infinitely small, and the negligibility (and negligence) of human beings within the complex network of interdependencies found in nature.
concept and development: Eugenia Demeglio
performance and development: Mary Kate Sheehan
sound: φο
approximate duration: 20’
presented on 8th June 2024 at dot.wip
