Northampton IDEA is an interactive & supportive context for new performance pieces: dance, music, theater & writing. Each of the four performances (none longer than 10 minutes) is followed by 5 minutes of writing time for the audience. After the final performance we gather in a circle to share our writing -- thus weaving together our collective experience of the performance.
IDEA was launched in Amsterdam by Christina Svane & Pauline de Groot in 1991 at Pauline’s Studio de Koe. It began as a monthly experiment in a new performance paradigm, in which performer and audience have an exchange in the language of imagery and intuition, instead of criticism and speculation. It became a meeting ground for the itinerant global dance community, and after a few year’s hiatus, is once again going strong. Christina Svane moved IDEA to America in 2004 at Studio Firenze, in Florence, Mass., and now hosts it at The Blue Guitar Gallery in Easthampton.
The next IDEA will be on the Saturday before
the Spring Equinox, March 13, 7:30 pm
For more information contact Christina Svane
The Fountain at IDEA
I looked for her in ancient cultures
I looked for her in Alaskan forests
I looked for her in wild romance
I looked for her in chanting workshops
I looked for her in motherhood
I found her here, in a circle of strangers
Listening to the mysterious poems
Brought on by a dancer, a singer, a poet.
Each of our responses a verse,
The circle as a whole the poet.
Oct. 19, 2007
Christie Svane
About the Audience Responses
The model is conversation: taking each dance as a statement and responding likewise. The realness of the moment and our mutual share in creating that moment is not conditioned or tamed in any way by calling a dance a "work-in-progress". The moment is still absolute; the future we envision may never arrive; the improvements we seek are secondary. In conversation, when someone says, "I love you," you don't respond by telling them they should work on their pronunciation ...so this experiment is a challenge to us to be in the moment with the performer.
Among these writings you won't find reviews or descriptions of the dances we saw. But you may hear the way they changed the rhythm of our breath or left a sensation of silk on our skin or bestowed the status of a soundtrack on the miscellaneous noises in our periphery. Through these writings we are eavesdropping on the audience's internal dialogue, stimulated by the dance they have just seen or done. Glimpsing the territory the dance has led us into.
