REFLECTION on Dance Performance 05.07.2025

5. June - 26. July 2025

COLOURS x EXOgallery

The stage is yours!

Group exhibition curated by Eric Gauthier

As part of the prestigious COLOURS International Dance Festival, Eric Gauthier expands his stage beyond dance and invites leading voices in contemporary art to participate in an interdisciplinary exhibition. Bringing together artists from different cultures and backgrounds, the show explores how different artistic practices use color as a universal form of expression.

Borrowing from the overarching theme of the COLOURS International Dance Festival, The stage is yours! creates a vibrant dialogue between two art forms – where the energy of dance meets the depth of color, resulting in a powerful celebration of creativity, movement and human expression. Through this synthesis, the exhibition invites the audience to reflect on how color and movement shape our perceptions, emotions and interactions with the world.  EXO Gallery [online] At: https://exo-gallery.com/the-stage-is-yours-colours-x-exogallery-curated-by-eric-gauthier/ (Accessed 26.09.2025)

Artwork: Comprehension is Motion by Marina Wittemann

Choreography & Dance: Jonathan Reimann

Composition & Music: Nicholas Reimann

Dramaturgy: Jodie Salter

1. What happened when my artwork became embodied? Did it shift my understanding of the piece? Did the dancer or the musician discover something I hadn’t noticed before?

I think it’s already meaningful that the dancer, musician, and dramaturg chose this particular work of mine. We hadn’t spoken beforehand, they saw only the image and a short description of my practice. So their interest was based on visual attraction. That already says something about how the work reaches people before words.

Later, I had a long conversation with Jonathan, the dancer and choreographer who responded to my piece. We talked about the space between experience and understanding, that moment when something happens inside you, but you can’t yet name it. It’s not fully processed, but it’s real. We both felt this is where the work lives. Jonathan mentioned that a book that was touching him - The Stranger by Albert Camus, not directly connected to my piece, but relevant in tone. It’s about something that happens, something profound, but without a clear resolution or meaning. That atmosphere felt similar to what we were both exploring.

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As for discoveries: yes, Nicholas used the sound of crumpled paper, layering it over and over until it became something else, like a snowball effect. I found this fascinating because even though I don’t work with dry paper (I manipulate newspapers when they’re wet), the gesture of layering was similar to my technique of working with wet paper.

What surprised me most was Jonathan’s interpretation of the work as an internal conflict. I had always imagined the piece as showing two figures standing on opposite sides, judging the world from different perspectives. But Jonathan’s choreography showed it as one person wrestling with themselves. That shifted something for me. It made me see the emotional space of the work as more inward and more singular than I originally thought.

2. How did it feel to give my work over to others, to see it translated?

I felt very curious to see what would happen. There was a real sense of anticipation. I was excited, I was looking forward to the moment of discovery. I didn’t want to control anything. I was open to seeing how someone else would read the work, how they would feel it in their own way and then translate it into something new. That unknown, the part I couldn’t predict, was what made it so interesting for me.

3. What did the use of sound bring to the experience?

First of all, it wasn’t music in the traditional sense, it was sound. Not a melody, but something raw, physical. That already added a kind of abstraction. The sound was big, dominating, almost overwhelming. It absorbed the space in a way that made it feel heavy. When you normally crumple a newspaper, it’s a softer, thinner sound. But here, the sound was exaggerated, it felt metaphorically heavier, almost metallic, as if the paper carried more political weight, the weight of propaganda.

That contrast struck me deeply, especially because in my practice, I never crumple paper. I work with wet newspapers, I soak them, and manipulate them when they’re soft and flexible and wet. The only time I use them dry is right at the beginning, when I rip them once, and then they no longer make any sound. So in a way, the sound the musician used was disconnected from my process, but that was also what made it fascinating. He didn’t know how I actually work, but he responded to the visual outcome.

Nicholas' interpretation led to something entirely different: a dry, loud, rigid sound, a metaphor, maybe, for the stiffness of political messaging, for how propaganda flattens complex realities into a single metal tone. The sound layers repeated and repeated until they became a kind of void. Just like too many voices in the media collapse into one narrow, sharp narrative. It reminded me how propaganda always ends in force, and often, in metal weapons.

4. What did the use of movement bring to the experience?

First of all, the dancer’s movement felt like folding paper. Sometimes sharp and angular, sometimes soft and round. I watched Jonathan’s body stretch, over and over, and it reminded me of how I stretch wet newspaper when I work. I pull it gently, remove all the folds, until it lies flat, smooth, ready for transformation. His movement mirrored this process. I kept waiting for a moment of collapse, the body giving in under pressure, but it never came. That, in itself, was powerful. A kind of quiet strength.

Metaphorically, that refusal to collapse felt very personal. I saw myself in it. No matter how much internal pressure I experience, from life, from making art, from holding everything together, I try not to break. Just like the paper I use. When it’s wet, it never tears. It becomes soft but resilient, and I guide it into its final shape.

The movement was also about perspective. His body kept shifting from side to side, looking forward, looking back. It felt like an inner conversation. Like someone trying to decide something important: Which way is right? Which part of me do I trust? What does it mean to be “right” at all? It felt like a struggle inside one person. Not against the outside world, but within, between two moral or emotional poles.

It reminded me of Pyotr Bezuhov from War and Peace. A person who evolves through experience, inner struggle, and переживания, this deep Russian word for emotional processing. He grows into someone capable of love and care. That kind of journey felt very close to what I saw in the performance. Not just dance, but transformation. From confusion to clarity, not through logic, but through feeling.

5. What tension did I notice between the four disciplines?

What I noticed most was how different each team’s approach to the artwork was, especially in how they reflected on the visual material. Some responses were quite literal, while others became more abstract, more layered.

For example, in the piece based on Susanne Bonowicz’s work The stars look very different today, the approach was very direct and sincere. The artwork itself was bright and colourful, with recognisable city silhouettes, and the dancers wore costumes that matched the mood of the painting. The music, David Bowie’s Space Oddity, also supported this open and emotional tone. It was beautiful and positive. Everything: the sound, the movement, the artwork, came together like a celebration. I could feel the purity and emotional honesty in it, and it was joyful.

Then there was the response to Ryan Crotty’s painting, which used thick layering of colour. The dancers reflected this through how they moved through space, beginning low to the floor, gradually moving upward, layering gestures on top of each other, and even lifting one another. It was a kind of physical layering, echoing how the painting had been made. I liked how they translated the material method of painting into choreography, not in content, but in structure.

Another piece by Valo Valentini was more technical and abstract. The dancers and musician worked almost like two parts of a single string, mimicking the vibrations and physical logic of a metal string instrument. It was very precise and intuitive. Less emotional, more about movement physics and sound tension. It created a very different kind of energy, almost mathematical.

My own piece felt the most challenging to me, personally. Because my work is colourful on the surface, but there’s something more fragile or even violent underneath. It speaks about pressure, rupture, dualities, the tension inside of us. I felt that the dancer, Jonathan, and the musician, Nicholas, and the dramaturge Jodie, all really understood this. They didn’t try to make it pretty. They worked with the idea of inner struggle. The movement felt like someone looking for clarity, but stuck between two opposing feelings or realities.

And somehow, I felt connected to  Jonathan personally. There was a kind of mutual recognition, even though we hadn’t worked together before. As if our inner landscapes shared something, this contradiction between strength and softness, control and collapse. So, in a way, the tension I felt was not just between disciplines, but between interpretations: between comfort and confrontation, between what’s easy to digest, and what demands something more.

Reflection on overall experience:

What surprised me and maybe what I hadn’t fully realised before, was how much my work can shift in meaning when placed into another artist’s hands. This experience reminded me that once the artwork is in the world, it’s no longer just mine. People don’t need to understand my process or intention in order to feel something real. The dancer and musician didn’t know I work with wet paper, and yet they captured something essential about pressure, layering, inner conflict. That made me realise: art doesn’t rely on accuracy, it relies on resonance.

This collaboration also made me think more about authorship. I often feel like I’m in control when I work, even when the material is wild and physical, I’m shaping it. But here, my artwork shaped others. It became a trigger, not a conclusion. A mirror, not a message. I don’t want my work to just “say something.” I want it to open a space where something happens. Where something moves.