Bodies in Urban Space performed in Salzburg. Image courtesy Lisa Rastl
Willi Dorner and a group of 20 performers are asking Sydneysiders to trust them.
‘I want to take the residents on a walk in their own city,’ said Dorner.
Like a contemporary Pied Piper he will journey with people through Sydney’s streets where they will encounter, en route, brightly clothed dancers squeezed into nooks and crannies in sculptural tableaux, eventually arriving at an undisclosed destination.
Dorner said, ‘We are used to moving quickly from A to B barely noticing the architectural environment we traverse. I think we underestimate the enormous changes that cities are undergoing.’
Premiered in Paris in 2007, Bodies in Urban Spaces has been performed in cities globally by the Vienna-based company, Cie. Willi Dorner. This is their first Australian visit.
Dorner’s project taps into a global consciousness – and a hot topic of the day – of urban redevelopment, livability and more recently the flourishing of cities as cultural precincts. Its temporality, however, also sits perfectly with this year’s Art & About theme Endangered.
Dorner said: ‘I like this title, since I see the situation for city dwellers [being] “endangered”. We have to raise our voices to fight for the right to influence important decisions on how cities should develop.
‘The living in urban spaces is our future. Our cities will get crowded in the next decades and we urgently need to discuss how we can live together; how we can design our life in cities worth living. This is a very important topic in this day.’
So how does Dorner impart this message; how does Bodies in Urban Spaces work?
Not dissimilar to the flash mob (which became a trend a decade ago), Dorner has taken the power of a choreographed popup action and expanded it to a more targeted dialogue with the city and its architecture.
Bodies in Urban Space performed in Brighton (UK). Image courtesy Lisa Rastl
A group of 20 performers will occupy the gaps between buildings, jammed in doorways or alcoves, their brightly coloured ubiquitous hoodies and tracksuits starting to be read as abstract forms – a tableaux of found objects.
‘I use these colourful elements as a contrast to the grey, black, brown house facades,’ said Dorner. ‘We cannot see their faces, they become objects and I place these bodies to make up different sculptures, solo, duos – I think in terms of shaping a form.’
‘Generally speaking, I am interested in how we can perceive architecture/space through our body or, more precisely, speaking through all our senses besides the visual one.’
The crowd typically swells en route, at times blocking the streets and creating temporary traffic jams and chaos. Dorner said that in London they had around 1000 people following.
‘I like that people follow the trail, start to talk to each other, but also about their own city. I like very much that an exchange starts to happen and that people spend time in the streets and look at their city and talk about their city. This social aspect became very important for me as well. It becomes a political demonstration,’ said Dorner.
Dorner started out as a choreographer interested in notions of phenomenology, which lead to actions more akin to sculpture and a curiosity for playing with spatial phenomenology.
‘As you walk, you perceive information and experience different things on the go … You create a personal relationship to your urban environment … and you connect (new) memory with places,’ said Dorner.
Bodies in Urban Space performed in London. Image courtesy Lisa Rastl
To encounter Bodies in Urban Spaces at one of only two Australian performances meet at Hyde Park’s Archibald Fountain (Cnr Market and Elizabeth Street) at 12.30pm on Friday 10 October, and Saturday, 11 October and be prepared to be surprised. The Sydney route is a little under 2 kilometers and concludes around 2pm.
Art & About Sydney is the City of Sydney’s annual collaborative arts festival where every street, laneway, building site, intersection and thoroughfare is a canvas for creation and storytelling.
It will run from 19 September to 12 October. This event is free.
