RE.SONANS: Synthesis of Movement, Vision, and Sound
On 22 May, Kaunas (60 Laisvės Avenue) witnessed RE.SONANS: an unconventional, intriguing interdisciplinary performance which featured a video and audio presentation by Bionics and dancing by professional dancers Marius Pinigis and Antonia Koluyartseva.
You are welcome to view the video report by Lukas Motiejūnas (in Lithuanian, l.motiejunas@vkt.vdu.lt) and photo report by Jonas Petronis (j.petronis@vkt.vdu.lt).
“The title reference to resonance quite accurately reflects the content of the performance. It is an interdisciplinary process which unites sound, vision, and movement. All these elements affect one another, thus becoming the sources of resonance”, the performance’s co-creator, dancer Marius Pinigis, explained.
RE.SONANS presented an interpretation of the modern conception of time. The performance focused on the evolution from the primeval understanding of time to a utopian idea of a 25th hour of the day. This extra hour symbolizes the ever-increasing pace of life, the information overload, and the broadening opportunities of man.
The centrepiece of the work was the transformation of time as it is experienced by the human body. It moves in space like at a crossroads, balancing between the harmonious environment it is familiar with and the constantly shifting, chaos-reigned modern setting.
“The modern man probably finds even the very concept of harmony as largely alien, as a kind of construct which everyone thinks they understand but haven’t experienced and has no time to delve into it. The hurry and the rapid pace of life reduce the likelihood of experiencing harmony with yourself and the environment. As creators, we can generally associate harmony with the creative process. It is crucial to recognize an opportunity in the rush: to observe the environment and its processes, to be a part of them. This is the path to achieving a sense of harmony”, members of Bionics, the media art group participating in the performance, commented.
Their thoughts were seconded by Marius Pinigis, who emphasised that we indeed are increasingly distancing ourselves from harmony with nature, ourselves, and our intuition. Paradoxically, the famous Vitruvian Man by Leonardo da Vinci, which symbolizes the idea of man as the perfect creation of nature and a reflection of the universe, is more and more deformed in the modern world, Pinigis elaborated.
“By trusting technology and the unprecedented rush we lose touch with our natural instincts, senses, and intuition. So it is crucial for the modern man to find the middle ground: even while rushing, creating, and improving everything around us, we must keep reminding ourselves about where we came from and who we are. In other words, sometimes you have to stop, take a breath, look around, blink, get a whiff, and then move on”, Pinigis clarified.
Dancer Antonia Koluyartseva added, “I think that hurrying is the harmony of the modern man. That is why we are afraid of losing the Internet or the cell phone, even for a day”.
With RE.SONANS, Vytautas Magnus University has gone out to the city streets and reminded everyone of the intensive and creatively rich life promoted by the community of VMU. Some of the perfomers are VMU graduates: dancer Marius Pinigis, Bionics members Lina Pranaitytė and Raminta Garbuzaitė are all alums of the university. 25 Hours. VMU in the City Streets is a year-long event series dedicated to the 25th re-establishment anniversary of Vytautas Magnus University.
About Performance Participants
Marius Pinigis is a professional dancer of modern dance who spent six years in the Kaunas dance theatre troupe Aura, and took part in the creative activities of Johannes Wieland, Amos Ben-Tal, Ferenc Feher, Deborah Light and other foreign choreographers. Pinigis is actively participating in modern dance seminars and intensive courses. He also gives lessons of modern dance at Aura, Vytautas Magnus University, and Kaunas Choreography School.
Antonia Koluyartseva is a professional modern dancer from St. Petersburg and a member of Aura (since 2013). She has studied in St. Petersburg and the Prague Dance Centre. As a dancer Koluyartseva has worked in OKNO Dance Project and Guild Contemporary Dance Company, collaborated with choreographers Dana Raz, Kulli Roosna, Kenneth Flack, and others.
Bionics is a group of experimental music and visual arts. Its members look for connections between physical phenomena and matter, between different media and art forms: visual projections, installations, spatial objects, art of light and movement. The sound compositions combine ambient, electro, minimal, and glitch styles with the aesthetics of digitally transformed voice.
