spassmuss

(2018)
Lake Studios Berlin / Theaterhaus Mitte

Choreography: Deva Schubert
Performance: Ailin Formia, Catalina Urtubey, Roland Walter
Music: Emilio Gordoa
Damaturgy: Juan Felipe Amaya González

spassmuss is a stage performance developed by Roland Walter, Catalina Urtubey, Ailin Formia, Emilio Gordoa and choreographed by Deva Schubert; it deals with the development of a collective performative language based specifically on the concept of spasm and its different manifestations.

Through the precise use of the different physicalities of the performers, the stage becomes a space where these differences collide, creating situations and interactions based on movement and language. They can be described as uncanny and even absurd but are delivered and made accessible through the means of a subtle use of humor. Together, the bodies, objects, and stage elements are composed into a rhythmical machinery. With the underlying question of how and when the vulnerability of the human can appear within this machinery.

It is in this space of irritation and friction between different bodies –between human and machine, between sound and text, between radios, water pistols, wigs, a wheelchair, and music–that the concept of spasm manifests as a choreographic strategy that reveals the dimension of the unpredictable, the uncontrollable, and the surprising.

The piece starts with a familiar situation of miscommunication between different languages, with noise and cacophony but also with the inherent miscommunication of the audience-stage situation. At the beginning a landscape of radio static sound, an artificial silence and the sudden interruption of human and non-human voices is experienced. From this starting point a constant drive of the performers and musician leads towards a transformation of the same situation at the end of the piece, establishing a way out of the limitations of language and acknowledging the power of touch and the concreteness of a collective body.