Tenacity of Space

Deborah Hay never became attached to a language. In Tenacity of Space, this pioneer of postmodern dance continues her fundamental work on practice as a way of expanding the dancer’s horizons. With the DANCE ON dancers, she sought experimental conditions that would make it possible for them to give expression to their experience in space. The title of the piece came by chance from Jim Crace’s novel Harvest, which describes the cataclysmic transformation of an agricultural community. Tenacity of Space was created against the backdrop of the election of Donald Trump and the movements of Syrian migrants, which Deborah Hay, who sees dance as her form of ‘political activism’, has responded to through pure movement, an almost ‘Buddhist’ movement that starts out from the visual field of each dancer. After working with performers of every level, the American choreographer has concentrated on experienced dancers. With DANCE ON, she has found seasoned partners. She is particularly preoccupied with the issue of age: ‘I had to find another way of pursuing what I wanted to do that was not connected with physical endurance or virtuosity.’ To the latter Deborah Hay has preferred sober simplicity and a search for what dance can be when proven effects are set aside. Tenacity of Space epitomises her. She quotes Gaston Bachelard’s Poétique de l’espace: ‘Immensity is within us. It is linked to a sort of expansion of being that life restrains and that prudence checks.’

Source: program of the CND