Echo

ECHO is a collaboration that explores movement at/as the intersection between drawing and dance. Dual interests in improvisation and the potential of gestures as a form of drawing in air, have prompted questions around the improvisatory nature of gestures and their role in relation to conversational speech. In this case observed gestures, associated with forgetting or remembering that fill gaps in conversation, provide the starting point for the work. First, a series of observed gestures evolve into a movement sequence that is captured using motion-tracking technology. The data, specifically from the hand sensors, will be translated into linear movement trails using vector drawing software and then into cut vinyl lines. These lines will be installed over a two-day period as a scheduled event in Open Space at the Axis Arts Centre, MMU Cheshire. The artist/drawer will not echo the dancer’s hand movements through a gestural mode of drawing; instead a new sequence of gestures associated with the labour of installing a vinyl line will provide an underpinning rhythm for further danced improvisations that respond directly to the line. The slowed down process of depicting/installing the trail of the dancer’s movements exposes the drawing in the making, highlighting its own performative aspects. As a final echo of the fleeting nature of the dancer’s movement, the vinyl line will be unpicked, leaving no remaining trace