Do You Want Me To Stay For Anything In Particular?
2019. Immersive concert-performance for warehouse/blackbox space, duration: 60 minutes.
In collaboration with Mitsuaki Matsumoto and Poorna Swami.
This is a concert of sound, and of movement.
Irreverent towards harmony and melody, both musician and dancer wade through a haunting terrain of carefully fragmented silences, spasms of sound, darknesses, and absences. Music is not always the driving force and the dancing body is not always the centrepiece. Together, the two amorphous performers invert the notion of a concert, inviting the listener to also see and the spectator to also listen. In this shadowy, sensory space, sound and body often disappear, suggesting the loss of something tangible and yet elusive.
The work has been crafted from a series of abstract ‘scores’ that are constructed to evoke absence and loss. These are musical scores, visual scores and choreographic scores – all inter-dependent and born of each other. These scores interpret, complement and contradict each other. With this formal construction/de-construction of absence – through the fleeting, sensory vibrations of music and the quiet pulsating force of dance – the intimate concert leaves the space with residues and recollections. It proposes that the quiet and unseen happenings might be the ones that last.
Composed by Mitsuaki Matsumoto
Performers: Mallika Singh and Mitsuaki Matsumoto
Choreography: Sujay Saple and Poorna Swami
Stage+Light Design: Sujay Saple
Dramaturgy: Poorna Swami
Lights Operation: Ajay Nair
Production Manager: Samrat Chandanshive
Videography and Editing: Ajay Nair, Samrat Chandanshive, Saurav Khurana
Supported by The Japan Foundation, New Delhi and G5A Foundation For Contemporary Culture
Performed at G5A Foundation for Contemporary Culture, Mumbai