Radical / Light
The body is never in the present, it contains the before and the after, tiredness and waiting. Tiredness and waiting, even despair, are the attitudes of the body. Perhaps tiredness is the first and last attitude, because it simultaneously contains the before and the after.
Radical / Light is a project for a film based on the eponymous dance performance by choreographer Salva Sanchis. Robbrecht Desmet departed from the creation process of the piece for the conception of his film.
His interest is not so much in unravelling the artistic motives or the central idea of the choreography but rather in reflecting on the specific character of the space in which it is created: the rehearsal studio, a half-open, half private workspace where, often in an intimate way, one is anticipating a public moment. The filmmaker is fascinated by this 'not yet'. The film presentation Radical / Light is not about the performance with the same title but tries to give meaning to the labour that precedes it. Accordingly the strong interest in the artistic material of the dancer: one’s own body and that of the other dancers, the relations with oneself and co-performers. The film collects impressions of the specific and spatial character of the dancing as work and looks for this in a face, silhouette or a garment, in the relations between the dancers and in the complex relation with ones own body.
A live voice-over text, written by essayist Rudi Laermans reflects about choreography, dance and the dancing body, the collaborative making of dance in the studio and the relation between this creation process and a virtual audience, … as well as on the status of the ‘cinematographically imagined’ bodies. This does not start form the position of the filmmaker nor the choreographer: the text rather implies a non-specified look, at once more detached but then again highly enthralled. The spoken text does not endorse nor supports the images, doesn’t add information but bets on the possibility of a productive difference between the word and the cinematographic image without escalating in disagreement.