Alexandra Bachzetsis: A Piece Danced Alone

Artist, performer and choreographer Alexandra Bachzetsis presents her most recent work A Piece Danced Alone, in collaboration with Chisenhale Gallery, London and the Centre d’Art Contemporain de Brétigny. The artist will show the stage performance in the CCA Theatre at the Festival.

Alexandra Bachzetsis’ most recent piece comprises an open-ended suite of solos that are casually passed from one performer to the other. The work’s dramaturgy is enhanced by the punctual use of pre-recorded and live video material presented on monitors, commenting on and dialoguing with the live act. A Piece Danced Alone confronts the audience with a series of micro-performances – each involving a methodical interpretation of specific physical instructions executed by two identically dressed performers who, as if learning and stealing from each other, exchange and gradually modify the elements of each one’s individual choreography. The piece begins with a sequence of deceptively simple, repetitive movement routines that slowly turn into a controlled transgression of rules. As the movement repertoire of one 'solo' is traded back and forth, it changes as imperceptibly as it does irrevocably, thereby embodying the creation of identity itself. This study of expression oscillates between mechanical imitation and studied interpretation; Bachzetsis’ investigation is at once erotic, empathic, and pointedly anti-academic. Gestures and words are invented, embodied, and ultimately released from their original meaning. As in a hall of mirrors, the difference between the original and imitation slowly dissolves in the reflection of an image.

Commissioned by GI Festival.

Text supplied by third party.