Vera Tussing will spend a week with the students of the Antwerp Conservatoire in the May 2021. They will work on a movement score that will form the basis of a durational installation performance under the title, ‘Choreographic Sculpture #3 - Collective’ with several interventions at Dansand 2021.

 Over the last years she has worked on several sculptural projects, starting with Choreographic Sculpture #1 - Pathways as part of IN/FINITY and more recently Choreographic Sculpture #2 - Hands - that allows people to explore more differentiated ways of touching or being with touch via a small hand sculpture in their own home environment.

The movement score they inhabit for Dansand will take the "stick walk", a score from Vera's 2014 creation T-Dance as a starting point. In T-Dance this was originally created for 4 performer, but will now be adapted and transformed into a score for a larger ensemble. XX performers are connected by wooden sticks, in a practice of mediated touch.

This "organism" assembles the individual movements and interactions of the performers into a single larger movement practice. What type of walk, movement or dance emerges when you connect a group of people. How can they move, roll, slide or push while remaining connected somewhat at distance as part of this collective body?
 
There is no "leading part" in the dance that emerges. People act or react, movement transpires throughout the entire collective body. When in motion, initiation.and response are blurred. When one hand touches the other, via a stick, who touches whom? A constantly waving interplay where sensations are distributed and received.

Choreographic Sculpture #3 - Collective, will be travelling along the landscape of Oostende during Dansand. 

* If it wasn't for corona, this moving collective would pause and invite passers by to interact.