Space Harmony

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The “Space Harmony” project contains an installation, a live performance in a gallery space.

It brought together 2 spatial partners.

Motion of an installation is connected to bodily actions. The installation dances. And dancers are part of the sculptural concept, the “dance partners”.

During the performance, dance and installation are equally important, independent and mutually responsive fragments of a larger whole.

The role of installation is not to become a part of the stage design, but to remain as a dance partner constantly sending invitations to curious minds and wondering hands.

The live performance takes place in Darat al Funun which is a cultural centre surrounded by a garden and the ruins of a Byzantine church in the heart Amman, Jordan.

Photography: Marco Microbi, Xiaoman Ren

The Process

After six-month research on Laban’s Space harmony and re-constructing one of the space harmony scales, Choreographer Abd Al Hadi Abunahleh led a group of artists, took a residency at a creative open space – House of Dreaming.

During the residency, they conducted 10 movement experiments in natural settings and indoor settings, as a study of the movement of the body in space based on structures and geometric projections.

Inspirations:

1.”Movement scale”: The scales are series of directions, creating pathways through space around the body, as if one were in the center of a crystalline solid. The crystalline solids are an integrated part of Laban Movement Analysis, a method that provides us with a language and practice to observe, analyze, describe and understand human movement.

2.”Chestahedron”: The Chestahedron, named after artist Frank Chester, is a geometrical form associated with the human heart and the earth. Inspired through Rudolf Steiner’s planetary seals and capitals of the pillars in the first Goetheanum, the California artist, sculptor and geometer, Frank Chester, started his journey looking for the three-dimensional, seven-sided form exist that might also demonstrate the harmonic nature of a platonic solid. Not being satisfied with existing seven-sided models, Frank Chester began to experiment: with clay, string, straws, wire, paper, soap bubbles, and all manner of forms. After many failures he discovered, in the year 2000, while artistically playing, an entirely new, never-before seen geometric figure that demonstrates a remarkable correlation to the form and functioning of the human heart. He called his discovery the “Chestahedron”.

3.“Bodies in urban spaces”: Willi Dorner’s imaginative art project ‘bodies in urban spaces’ takes its audiences on a walk through the urban landscape. Groups of dancers, climbers and performers wearing brightly colored clothes run through busy malls and high streets and cram themselves into doorways, alcoves and any gap they can find in public buildings.

4.”Body cartography”: It is a project that engages with the vital materiality of human bodies to create live performance that facilitates a re-enchantment of embodiment, relationship, and presence. Dance maker, somatic movement therapist and cultural producer Olive Bieringa and artist Otto Ramstad have been collaborating as BodyCartography Project for the past twenty years. A practice focused on “audiencing” is evolved. This practice focuses on generating audience engagement to support the viewing of contemporary live work.

Project keywords:

inclusive
experimental
interactive
playful

Project key topics:

living architecture
dynamic body
kinesthetic experience

Cast:

Concept, director: Abd Al Hadi Abunahleh
Assistant director: Xiaoman Ren
Choreographer: Anas Nahleh, Abd Al Hadi Abunahleh
Dance: Natalie Salsa’, Omar Hasanain, Susan Bainter Baghdadi, Daniel Issa, Mariana Al Tamimi, Rashmi Yeolekar, Shahed Jallad, Raneem Nahhas
Video-grapher: Mohammed Zakaria, Mohammadali Awad

“We had a lot fun moving and balancing in the entirely new and heart-like geometric figure, called ‘Chestahedron’.”

– Abd Al Hadi Abunahleh (Director)

We created a page to document the journey. To know more about this project, click on the big B button below.

Behance

The Premiere

The premiere of “Space Harmony” took place at the 30th Anniversary Celebration of Darat al Funun – The Khalid Shoman Foundation, on 24th of October, 2018.

The live performance lasted for 20 minutes. It was well received by audiences.

More than 30 audiences remained after the performance and danced with installation for several hours till the nightly closure of the gallery.

In the-five-month-exhibition, nearly a thousand people enjoyed the experience of exploring and playing with interactive dancing installation, generating an ambiance of fun and excitement.

Photography: Marco Microbi