ANDANTE
Andante is an invitation to pause, to connect with your senses, to be in a room with others and not have to say or even see anything. It is conceived as a generous and patient walk into a cloud of attention and time.
‘a fascinating piece of conceptual art and one that unabashedly rejects the conventions of
dance.’
dancetabs.com
One of the most simple – and in that simplicity, complex – and extraordinary shows I think I might ever have seen. (...) Andante is a work of profound and painful nostalgia for everything you’ve had to step away from.
Maddy Costa
"They’re immaculately dressed in identical blue hoodies that come down to their upper thighs – the hazy lining captures an ethereal light – and with otherwise bare legs, they’re strikingly and self-consciously fashionable.
It’s a hugely ambitious work; but this choreographic complexity is infused with, and ultimately grounded in, a palpable humility, boldness and nuance."
Paul Hughes, Exeunt Magazine
"What really catapults Andante into greatness is the accompanying design elements: from the tiny white explosive capsules that pepper the black edges of the white stage, to the graded infinity cove that makes The Lowry’s Aldridge Studio seem more vast than conceivably possible."
Peter Jacobs, The Reviews Hub
Directed by: Igor Urzelai and Moreno Solinas
Devised and performed by: Giorgia Ohanesian Nardin, Eleanor Sikorski, Moreno Solinas and Igor Urzelai
Dramaturge: Simon Ellis
Sound composition: Alberto Ruiz Soler
Set and costume design: KASPERSOPHIE
Lighting design: Seth Rook Williams
Nose: Alessandro Gualtieri
Voice Coach: Melanie Pappenheim
Producer: Sarah Maguire
Production manager:Hannah Blamire
Co-produced by:
Igor and Moreno, The Place and TIR Danza
Funded by:
National Lottery through Arts Council England
Commissioned by:
The Place, Cambridge Junction, DanceEast and DanceXchange
Developed by:
The Lowry
Supported by:
The London Community Foundation and Cockayne – Grants for the Arts, Office for Cultural and Scientific Affairs Embassy of Spain (ES), En Knap (SI), Yorkshire Dance (UK), South East Dance (UK), Centro per La Scena Contemporanea (IT), NAVE (CL), British Council, Dansateliers (NL), Zürich TanzHaus (CH), Extant,ResiDance XL (IT), CapoTrave/Kilowatt (IT), Roehampton University, Modern Dance Theatre (NL) and El Graner (ES)
The work sets the mind free by engulfing the audience in a fog to the point where nothing can be seen. A state leaving the spectator only with themselves and their senses in the moment. The collaboration with perfumer Alessandro Gualtieri made this state a living journey through a series of shifting scents.
The design is build around ideas of perception to free the spectator from analysis and readings.
By the end of the performance the thick fog produces a total whiteout robbing everybody of vision and each other’s company. To oppose this it became the role of the design to created a space where from we could shift into the archaic nature-like infinity of the fog. This became a shared space based on ideas of manmade infinity through a graphic horizon and an infinity curve.
In costume the horizon materializes itself as a white stripe across the chest of hoodies. At first it appears as an ordinary feature of any sports hoodie, but as the performers perfectly line up during the piece it reveals itself as a shared horizon running across all performers at exactly the same height tying them together.
The horizon is echoed in the curve through numerous blurred lines, which produces the visual effect of depth. Their blurred quality vibrate and shimmer when focusing on them. An effect making the performers stand out ultra crisp before the fog comes rolling in.
To capture and present the living and organic quality of the fog to come we worked with moiré effect in the costume. As the performers slowly move around the stage hazy lines, mimicking the ones of the infinity curve, dance and shift around the costume. It produces an ephemeral sense of transparency reacting to the breathing of the performer and hinting how everything is soon to disappear.
