Description

mech[a]OUTPUT was created by Koosil-ja in collaboration with Geoff Matters (music), John Klima (3D game world), David Or (live video), Nanako Nakajima (dramaturgy), Michael Casselli (equipment engineering), and Claudia Hart (3D modelling). The work was performed at Japan Society in NYC.

The project explores the relationship between resistance and creativity. mech[a] is a dance of restraint, based on Koosil-ja's study of the dances of the Noh-play DOJOJI. Through rigid adherence to the original choreography of DOJOJI, she treats the form itself as the subject, rather than as a medium. Simultaneously, the group transposes the work into their own aesthetic context. In contrast, OUTPUT is a dance of expression as Koosil-ja responds to and interprets over 100 video clips she has sequenced, selected from different movies thematically related to the story of DOJOJI. Her collaborators play the sequenced footage from a video pendulum set in the center of the stage. In the end, the two approaches merge as the struggles between female anger and righteousness, between physical restraint and emotional expression. Developing both pieces together over a long period in her own space, Koosil-ja seeks a way of creating and presenting work that is congenial to its mixed media nature, in the process revisiting the premises of theater and refining it to its essence.

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