In Still Live Salva Sanchis examines the relationship between sound and silence and so continues the study of movement that typifies him. Just as in Desh and A Love Supreme, two recent Rosas creations in which Salva Sanchis appeared as a dancer and choreographer, improvisation plays a crucial role. It is based on Reigen Seliger Geister (the Dance of the Blesssed Spirits), the second string quartet by the German composer Helmut Lachenmann. Salva Sanchis was inspired by Lachenmann’s score as well as his special vision of composition, perception and space.

 

"If the act of composing is meant to go beyond the tautological use of pre-existing expressive forms and – as a creative act – to recall that human potential which grants man the dignity of a cognizant being, able to act on the basis of this cognition, then composition is by no means a ‘putting together’, but rather a ‘taking apart’."

The structure of Still Live is propelled by one musical section lasting 28 minutes which is inserted into the whole. This intervention creates a tension between music and movement, with the latter extending over a longer period of time. The study of movement is based less on the rhythm and time structure of the music but is linked more to a number of compositional principles. The score is a complex instruction manual, one with a relatively high degree of freedom for the musicians, and a deconstruction of sounds.
A number of parameters have been established in the improvisation. One aspect of the movement is isolated at a time and this creates a strange atmosphere and heightens perception.
Nevertheless the improvised phrases are rarely fragmented and the three dancers glide smoothly through space with unrivalled control of their bodies. Although there is very little mutual contact between the dancers they appear to move through the same structure. This refers to the idea of the ‘super instrument’: Lachenmann regards his string quartet as a composition for 16 strings, one large body in which the hierarchy between the different instruments is indistinguishable. And for Salva Sanchis it is precisely here where the idea of choreography lies, and where the whole is created.

Perception
"Perception is more adventurous and elemental than listening: it plays with our received opinions and securities, it presupposes utmost sensitivity in our intuition and intellect and in all related activities of the mind."
Still Live almost imperceptibly plays on the audience’s perception, not so much by hoodwinking them but by introducing minimal shifts. When the musical sequence starts we become aware of the use of the silence that preceded it. The dancers’ poses always have a certain dynamism. Small changes in the way the dancers move produce a new quality of movement. In this way Still Live unfolds a range of sensations that heighten the senses.

Space
"In perceiving an object, our mind does more than simply apprehend the structure, the constituent resources and laws, and the spirit at work within that object: it also apprehends its own structure by entering into conflict with those very perceptions, thereby becoming all the more acutely aware of itself."
Performative space is by definition twofold, as the bodies relate both to one another and to space. Throughout the creative process Salva Sanchis works together with the artist Kristof Van Gestel, who in his installations uses abstract volumes – often primitive forms – and their possible meanings. For Still Live, Van Gestel created a monolithic wall as a visual reference that reacts against and contrasts with the movement. The material is not mediated in any way and the volume speaks for itself.
Despite the fact the fundamental principles are abstract, there is nevertheless a form of narrative. The choice of three dancers allows a minimal complexity, the possibility of counterpoint. Each of the characters has their own significance which develops over the course of time. They are abstract figures who irrefutably get each individual spectator’s imagination working.

 

Charlotte Vandevyver

(All the passages quoted are from:Helmut Lachenmann – Musik als existentielle Erfahrung: Schriften 1966-1995, ed. by Josef Häusler, Wiesbaden, 1996.)

Text originally published in Muntmagazine November 2006