Trace
This dance piece is inspired by photographer Jon Crispin's Willard Asylum Suitcase Project in which he photographed the suitcases contents long after their owners deaths.
Trace explores memory and its impact on perception of space. A woman navigates the familiar, sometimes recalling long-buried experiences.
Dancer:
Emily Thomson-Smith
Music:
Filipe Sousa, Hugo Diaz
Artist:
Jon Crispin
Costume Design:
Matthias Strahm
Photography:
Benedict Johnson
Reviews
“The first work on the program is a solo, Trace, conceived and danced by Mara Vivas and inspired by photographer Jon Crispin’s Willard Asylum Suitcase Project in which he has photographed suitcases stored in the Asylum long after the deaths of their owners. Photography is all about memory, a sliver of experience that remains alive for as long as the photograph lasts. In Crispin’s project he is not only recording the present but opening up the past. Vivas translates the suitcase into a freestanding dress (conceived by Matthias Strahm) in which she is both the contents and their stored memories. It is an idea that translates beautifully into dance and Vivas has the clarity of language to bring it to haunting reality. Her strong features remind me of photographs of Frida Kahlo and the intriguing black dress she wears has a bodice with vertical grillwork reminiscent of a cell door. Vivas traces memory, fixing her eyes on the past and using her arms as feelers around her, at one moment obsessively picking out details of her dress and at another searching space for a familiar compass sighting. She is both constrained by her dress and then excitedly dances it to a Hugo Diaz tango. There is a weight in her presence and a lightness in her sensibility as she sails out over the water, finally stepping out of her dress on to dry land and releasing the memories; she has gone but the dress and its traces remain.” Nicholas Minns, Writing about dance
“Mara Vivas’ solo Trace also began with her seated embedded, perhaps trapped, in a skirt from which she finally, surreptitiously, escaped. A stylish dancer, her precision, gestures and swiftly changing dynamics, to evocative Latin music, were suggestive of past experience and stories.” Maggie Watson, Oxford Dance Writers
Audience impressions
“Delicate and curiously humorous, a combination of fine detail and sweeping movement that welcomes the audience into an astutely observed world of nuance and flow.” - Tamsin Jeffrey
“What an intimate and intricate piece, like a journey of metamorphosis.” - Yoke Wong
“The mysterious skirt construction was so intriguing. It was a joy to watch the dancer move within its sometimes restrictive, sometimes empowering parameters. I can't wait to see more of Mara's work!” - Alexandra Groover
