Frankfurt Dresden Dance Company - Jacopo Godani

C.O.R.E (Creative Organization Reactive to Evolution) was spawned from an on-going process in Godani´s ouvre d´art. It reprised a presence, which lies at the heart of many of his choreographies linking them through time: human evolution.

One of the major events in human evolution, larger brain size, went hand in hand with a cascade of anatomical alterations in our forerunners. Many scientific theories and hypothesis suggest different scenarios about what was the cause that forced our ancestors to stand upright. Vertical posture led hominid primates to a unique form of locomotion: bipedalism. This unexpected development was accompanied by a realignment of skull and spine, and a neck rearrangement affecting skull position and size. Head and torso were brought into a vertical line over hips and feet. The foot evolved an arch to support the body's weight and absorb the forces and effects of upright motion. Other parts of our body were to find evolution through compromise. The outcome of all these processes was a mosaic of features shaped by natural selection: a working human body structure. After several million years of evolution, brain increased in size and complexity, its neural processing became more complex, allowing the expansion of consciousness, the art of word, abstract thinking and artistic representation.

In this Premiere, Godani´s fascination with evolution and his desire to explore choreographic boundaries, aimed for experimentation. Experimentation took the form of a continuous interrogation for the choreographer. The result was not an interpretation but a map, a tool with which to find a way towards a yet unknown resolution. On his first dialogue with the dancers for this production, Godani made the following remark, “While we are learning and recording in our minds dance material now, it can be something vague, as water of a river, a pattern. When we find the identity, it will become our own architecture”. Then, the map would change.

In C.O.R.E, concepts as evolution and experimentation, and narrative elements, in the form of projections, text and offstage voice, got embedded within the choreography. In this particular case, choreography functioned as the medium to transfer reality from the dance-studio to the stage. It was a set of “sense-making” rules that developed an abstract narrative where to find Godani´s own cosmology. It was part of the map that took dancers and audience through the journey. Michael Tucker – dancer of the Company – observed, “As you go [dancing the choreography], you think about musicality, dynamics… it´s like you have to sing along. It´s reading music but with your body, it is a choreographic map”.

Choreographic language moved and evolved to a more grounded and essential one during the rehearsal period. Pas de deux and solos became atavistic. At the same time, group scenes kept the thought of structural architectures. The fight to randomness, unconsciousness and automatic reactions, characterizes Godani´s choreographic work. Perception of this fight, which is expressed through his work, is a determining presence on his choreographies.

Choreographer and dancers interrogated themselves constantly through the artistic process, raising innumerable questions – How do we share our reality? How do we make the audience part of our research? How do we narrate this experience? Is this experience telling us anything about society? What if, what we consider an anomaly or an alteration is our very next step in evolution? And, what repercussions will open these anomalies in our future? Why is so difficult to overcome mental patterns? Why do we relay so much on habits? It is conviction what we fight or a physical habit? Or, it is a fight between different interpretations and convictions? What mental shift is working for us today? Following this reflexive questioning, a new approach to artistic labour took place: “Whatever we have developed in our mind as references, we can choose to do it differently. We may need to re-write our synapsis, re-write ourselves from zero, and this is going to bring us far forward in the process” (Jacopo Godani and dancers in conversation).

_{Text by Luisa Sancho with scientific support of Dr. Violeta Muñoz-Fuentes (Senckenberg Forschungsinstitut und Naturmuseum Frankfurt)}