09 Oct Daniel Gwirtzman
Residency Programme: July 2016
The Salinas Project: Searching for Place
Video Research
How does a body wired for the city react and respond when alone in a natural landscape? How does it feel to strip oneself of all material things – clothes, technology, possessions – and to surrender to larger forces in the world: the contours of a rocky terrain, the relentless, inhospitable climate, the incessant teasing of insects? What happens to Time when one is not harnessing it? How does an extreme land foster so much life, music, harmony?
These questions inform Daniel’s research into the contradictions and connections between the natural and the man-made, highlighting the contrasts between nature’s movements and his own, responding
to the specific landscape and the values and ways of life it governs. The remote location of Blanca and
its distance from an urban center provides a ripe territory to explore concepts of density versus space,
alienation and community, and inclusion and separation. What story does a body in this space provoke?
Stripped of a recognizable narrative, Daniel explores the stories that arise when a context is disrupted.
Playing with only the form of his body, he researches ideas of excess versus nothing. Integrating himself into a vast, unforgiving land, Daniel creates choreography for video which investigates risk and danger versus safety and comfort. What are the natural states of a body removed from its cultural center? What does it mean to experience isolation, dislocation. How lost is a body when removed from its home?
Concepts of freedom versus rigidity undergird the movement and stillness. When is movement authentic, when is it false? When do we recognize patterns of movement behavior? When does the body become unrecognizable? Then what has it become? What does it suggest? How does it make us feel?
How does artifice, the acquisition of learned behavior (and dance technique) influence daily habits, choices, feelings, outlooks, expectations and realities? Questions spark more questions. A cycle of un-certainty, a displacement remains. The form of being unsettled matches the content of the concepts. In seeking to investigate the interrelationships between body, space and narrative, the personal with the universal Daniel seeks evidence of movement, rhythm, texture and form in nature.
