Elektri(c)k

Elektri(c)k (2019) is an international contemporary circus artistic research project that culminated in five public performances at the government funded theatre El Teatro Circo Price, Madrid. As director, choreographer and co-lighting designer Man was responsible for leading nine emerging circus artists from seven different countries - Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Italy, Spain, Germany and Portugal – in an interdisciplinary investigation that explored the relation between light and the choreographic in performance making. Framed as a case study for Man’s doctoral thesis Light and the Choreographic: dancing with Tungsten, this work has generated new findings on illumination in the round, an unexplored territory in the expanding scholarly fields of light and scenography (Abufalia, Hann, Moran, Palmer). Intrinsic in circus performance making is the artistic fabrication of ‘the trick’ that can be found in composition methods and conceptual drives, generating ways of thinking and doing circus based on risk, illusion and seduction. Elektri(c)k explored these concepts with, and in relation to lighting, which in its intensification and attenuation can generate optical illusions and transform atmospheres. Man’s research in this field builds on twenty years of choreographic experience with circus and light in different international contexts and performance settings. The original soundscape for Elektri(c)k was created in collaboration with Edge Hill University graduate JJ Lyon, manipulating the audio recordings of reflections on light that emerged during the research process from the circus artists. The lighting design, in collaboration with Juan Carlos Menor, purposely made use of both LED and Tungsten apparatus in order to query the responsibilities and economies of energy efficiencies against poetic atmospheres in performance making. This eco-political line of inquiry informed by Morton’s notions of ‘dark ecology’ underpins Man’s doctoral research, which questions how shifting perceptions of different light environments affects a performer’s experience and choreographic decision making.