DD DORVILLIER
human future dance corps

Diary of an Image was a reflection on the making of image, or an image – the image of a history, the image of a community, the image of a dance, or a dancer – in playing with these representations the piece slid into becoming a kind of mirage of future and past.

Diary of an Image was shaped by Zeena Parkins's music – a live and electroacoustic score – centered on the grand piano which has lived at St. Mark’s Church for over 30 years. The piano, the resonance of the sanctuary, and St. Mark’s Church itself were kind of characters in the piece, as were the steps which Katerina Andreou and I danced, the mirrored silhouettes of three important female figures in my artistic career (Jennifer Monson, Jennifer Lacey, and Sarah Michelson) designed by Olivier Vadrot, and the light designed by Thomas Dunn which slowly transformed the entire space over the course of the piece.

The space of Diary of an Image was made for listening, looking, and thinking. It was filled with the contrasting sounds of loud printing machines, the silent rhythms of our movements, the mysterious reverberating chords of the old grand piano, the communal copy machine in permanent residence on the mezzanine. The audience was invited to sit around the edges of the dancing area, on cushions on the floor, upon which the pages of the platform catalogue were printed. The audience was literally sitting on the text. The lights made a simple yet spectacular cross fade from sunset on the inside of the sanctuary, to a kind of bedtime sunrise finale, shinning in through the stained glass windows, from outside the church, slowing down and stretching time.

Diary of an Image began with the Morse Code Opera, where a curious friction was produced between language's sounds and it's meanings. The Morse Code Opera was a minimalist choreography for sound, light, and sculptures and brought Olivier's silent icons into the realm of the sensible. The mirrored figures had a conversation in a code language we could recognize but not understand. After this, in silence, and in the presence of my mirror girlfriends, I performed a simple vertical and rhythmic dance, then Katerina Andreou followed with the same but this time with sound, then both of us simultaneously, with more music and more silences. There was no narrative and no representation, but the piece talked, asked questions, hesitated, meandered, and most importantly gave a space to think about things.