Effort Creates Fiction: Exploring the works of Luis Garay
This weekend Colombian born, Argentine based choreographer and director Luis Garay brings Maneries to FringeArts, April 14–16 (tickets/info). A solo created in collaboration with, and performed by, dancer Florencia Vecino, the dance sees the body as a cipher of linguistic material. Drawing on a catalogue of “gestures, pictures, poses, and sculptures,” Maneries explores the notion of universality and specificity existing in tandem. Vecino strives to represent all bodies through the employment of archetypal and recognizable images, and yet is still bound to her own body—its strengths, its limitations.
Though Garay’s renown is just beginning to reach beyond South America, he has been active as a director and choreographer for many years now. Below are a few examples of his notable shows and collaborations.
Ouroboro (2010)
“Ouroboro is an always changing system. A mechanism of directions, levels and proximities. Ouroboro explores new syntaxes of new gestures.”
Similar to Maneries, Ouroboro employs the body as a tool for language, representing various hieroglyphs. According to Garay, the work is rooted in the notion that empty space contains all possibilities.
Under de Sí (2013)
“Installation theatre work in which the audience enters this ambiguous universe of performative tasks. Spins around the idea of self-image building and the theatricality of genetics. [What does] hyper reality looks [sic] like if today were a museum to be seen from years ahead?”
A collaboration with visual artist Diego Bianchi, this work presents a hyperbolic reimagining of our image obsessed society—in terms of self-image as well as society’s obsession with image collection and presentation via smartphones.
Fisicología (2013)
“Proto dance. New limbs. Impossible limbs. Loop.”
Placed in the context of Buenos Aires’ stunning and somber Parque de la Memoria Fisicología appears as a series of living sculptures. New bodily frameworks are forged with boards and duct tape, simple movements are repeated ad nauseam. “Effort creates fiction,” according to Garay’s website.
—Hugh Wilikofsky