Tesseracts of Time - Jessica Lang and Steven Holl Architects

Описание: Tesseracts of Time is a collaboration between choreographer Jessica Lang and Steven Holl Architects that premiered November 6, 2015 at The Harris Theater for Music and Dance in Chicago.

Architecture and dance share the elements of space and light, yet they are on opposite ends of the spectrum with respect to time. Architecture is one of the arts of longest duration, while the realization of a dance piece can be a quick process and the work disappears as the performance of it unfolds. In Tesseracts of Time, architecture and dance merge in a compression of time and space.

The four sections of the dance correspond to the four seasons and the four types of architecture: (1) under the ground (2) in the ground (3) on the ground (4) over the ground.

The first section ‘UNDER’ begins with a slow movement of sunlight emitting from above and sweeping across curved interior spaces of the architecture. The dance physically vibrates in the dark shadows of the stage. Dancers are dressed in black geometric and angular costumes. Their movement is grounded and driven with linear thought to the percussive score Anvil Chorus by David Lang.

For the second section ‘IN’, compressed spatial sequences filled in deep light are projected in film. The dance movement defies gravity and explores geometry with emotional expression. Space and body in black and white work in synchrony with the minimalist piano music Patterns in a Chromatic Field by Morton Feldman.

The third section ‘ON’ reveals three twelve-foot-tall Tesseract Fragments. In geometry, the tesseract is the four-dimensional analog of a cube. In dance, the movement explores space now present in the third dimension of the stage. The music, Perilous Night, is percussive and the first work for prepared piano by John Cage.

The fourth section ‘OVER’ begins with the tension of sound and energy as the Tesseracts rise upwards to the music Metastaseis by Iannis Xenakis. Unlike the previous sections, bursting color floods the stage with dancers in asymmetrical colors of oranges and reds. Arvo Pärt’s Solfeggio takes shape in a synthesis of chromatic forms as the dance releases like a sunrise into intensely lyrical and hypnotic meditative phrases.

The whole piece takes a year—four seasons—but is compressed into twenty minutes. As there are 525,600 minutes in one year, this compression ratio would render an average human life as four years. Like the changing seasons, the dance returns to the darkness of ‘UNDER’. No beginning, no ending.

Lang and Holl selected music that has influenced their individual practices and for the music’s architectonic qualities, studied at Columbia University’s studio The Architectonics of Music (led by Steven Holl and Dimitra Tsachrelia). The architecture in Tesseracts of Time was developed by Steven Holl Architects through a research and development project called ‘Explorations of IN.’

Video credit: Spirit of Space