q&a: myriam gourfink on ‘breathing monster’
Myriam Gourfink and Kasper Toeplitz’s ‘Breathing Monster’
Image by Nicolas Chaussy
Internationally renowned choreographer Myriam Gourfink and electronic musician Kasper Toeplitz will present Breathing Monster from the 14th to the 16th of June in the National Art School’s Cell Block Theatre. The work is a meditation on slowness and control, fusing together extreme physicality and experimental sound to contemplate the relationship between humans and machines. I recently spoke with Gourfink to find out more about Breathing Monster.
We’re very excited that you are showing your work in Sydney. Is this your first time in Australia?
It is the first time I will show my work in Australia, I came in Melbourne as a dancer for Odile Duboc Company in 2004.
In E. M. Forster’s Howard’s End Margaret says ‘this craze for motion has only set in during the last hundred years. It may be followed by a civilisation that won’t be a movement, because it will rest upon the earth’. Is your work a reaction to the crazed motion of an industrialised society or an intensely focused celebration of this constant movement?
My idea was to allow myself to feel the space inside the body and outside, and I have discovered that when I was allowing myself to do so, the movement was slow, so yes in a way it is a reaction to the crazed motion.
Your work seems to have an implicit symbiosis with sound. How did you come to work with your musical collaborator and what does sound mean to your practice?
I was fond of noise music, I think because of the vibrations. Vibrations give to the dancer a lot of physical support. I was admiring the work of Kasper Toeplitz working with both noise music and contemporary music, so it was obvious for me to invite him to work with me, it was in 1999 and since then we have done together more than 20 projects. Music more than sound is for me a mental “architecture “, a mental space in motion that dialogues with the dance, which is a concrete space in motion. So above all music gives inside the piece another point of view.
Breath is very central to your work, how much did the centrality of this come to you via yoga?
The idea of dancing guided by the breath really comes from yoga practise, which is as far as I know the only technique really based on the art of breathing, yoga has developed so many ways of breathing and it is so well explained.
How much does the audience’s mobility during the show affect your performance?
The audience mobility is a pleasure, so it is a game for me to feel that mobility around.
You map out a labyrinthine space with your body and movement, how reactive is the movement to the different spaces in which you perform?
For Breathing Monster the score is precise, but of course there is still a very important range of interpretation, so it is my own dramaturgy while I’m dancing that will be changed by each new space.
‘Breathing Monster’, Myriam Gourfink & Kasper Toeplitz (France), 14-16 June | $45 Full / $35 Concession & Members, National Art School, Cell Block Theatre. Presented by Performance Space and National Art School in partnership with Critical Path and Dancehouse. Tickets available via http://www.performancespace.com.au/2013/breathing-monster-france/
