Boundaries

Boundaries. Interactive Experiential Dance Performance

The first contemporary dance performance in Lithuania for visually impaired adults allows blind and sighted audiences to experience dance in the dark, through senses. The idea of the performance is based on the perception of personal space and external space.
Humans and their environment exist within the boundaries of reciprocal causation. However, it’s not the position in the environment that matters, but the point of view towards it. Visually impaired people can perceive contemporary dance only by directly experiencing it themselves. There is no other way to perceive and grasp the movement, especially if a person has been blind since birth.
Here, modern technology is used – the device responds to dancers’ movements: every tilt of the arm, leg, or other body parts and the intensity of each movement in space create their own music. In this way, visually impaired audience members are shown different movements, while dancers, with the help of those sounds, create a sonic representation of their moving bodies.
Performance – research is a live process that seeks to evolve and to search for new forms which help experience dance in the dark. This is done through each participant’s experience, which is shared during the post-performance discussion with the creators. So even if you participate in the performance once, you may experience it differently the next time you attend.
“How the imagination is awakened along with the body that wants to follow the dancers’ dictated movements. How the slightest touch of the performers or ‘spectator’s’ inclusion in the movement can light up the imagination and the desire to get to know the performers better – the material of their clothes, the texture of their skin – but at the same time to be involved in the initiated movement in the darkness, to be carried by it. When you combine all this, it sparks the imagination, curiosity. In this way, you realize that disability can be more than a challenge, also an opportunity to perceive the world differently – in a way that is unique and inimitable”, – theatre critic, Justina Kuršinaitė.