Performing Arts Encounters - 'Espectra: Dancing Through Non-Human Voices'

The main goal of the interdisciplinary Espectra project, led by “Núcleo Emovere”, was to create a performance and installation using dance, voice, sound, and technology that conveys the sensory experience of connecting with a vocal-sound world that is in danger of extinction in Chile.

The project has involved the development of artistic material based on the relationship between the body, movement, our human voices, and the chants of Chilean amphibians, as well as the intersection with sound-visual devices created for the interdisciplinary work. Listening to recordings of amphibians (“Voces de Anfibios” by Mario Penna) involves an acousmatic experience with an archive, while at the same time recognising the agency of these voices. On the one hand, we consider the voice to be more than a medium, as a material with its own agency, beyond its expressive relationship with the subject that emits it. We recognise its affective, transformative, and productive capacity, taking an interest in its relational power to generate new materials.

The presentation aims to expose the procedures for addressing the development of a language that emerges at the intersection between dance and voice, which contains methodologies influenced by Somatics and listening procedures. These last ones are based on theories from musical cognition, integrating aspects of Leman's theory of kinesthetic couplings; imagination and metaphor in the interaction between sound-music and body-movement; and forms of reflective listening, such as reduced and Deep Listening.

The recognition of bodily emergencies and associated reflections form the basis for training, improvisation, and composition procedures designed to unfold what I call “vocalised corporeality,” where dance, voice, and musical composition procedures are intertwined. This exhibition will also feature practical demonstrations of certain materials composed of dance and vocalisation, based on the Chilean amphibians chants.