Co-creation with dancers allows for a more authentic and inclusive representation of diverse experiences and perspectives. It’s a transformative process that can lead to some of the most powerful and memorable creative process and performance. It requires a willingness to let go of control and embrace the unknown, trust, and openness to experiment and take risks. The result is a work of art that is truly collaborative and reflective of the collective creative energy of the entire team.  Through this process of collaboration, the dancers become co-creators of the piece. They are given the opportunity to contribute their own movement vocabulary, explore their own physicality, and express their own artistic vision.

In ‘The Intimacy of the Skin’ you will witness a mixture of unparalleled expression, a multilayered movement language, mesmerizing performers, astonish technique, incredible original score, and above all, the authenticity of each artist.

-Anderson Carvalho, project choreographer

A word from Adam:

After working with Anderson last year on our first project together When I Left the Room, this new project Intimacy of the Skin offered us a chance to integrate the music and sound design even deeper into the narrative of the performance.  From the beginning, Anderson brought me into the research process to understand where the performance is coming from.  In addition to reading some of the same source material Anderson read to create this project, I’ve also been exploring new ways of creating music with his guidance. 

The seed for the first sketch I wrote was entirely Anderson’s idea, and it was very intuitive and natural to create.  The approach was simple: 1) record myself reflecting on and talking about my past, 2) create an illustration while thinking about what I just talked about, and 3) improvise a piece of music on my saxophone while reflecting further.  These three creations gave me the building blocks to create a very personal piece of music, and it gave Anderson a visual component to add to the performance in the form of my drawing.  They all came from a very intimate place within me, and this is what the performance is all about.  Once those pieces were there, I spent a lot of time breaking them down and reorganizing them into something totally new, combining the voice memo with the improvisation. 

As with the other pieces in the project, the improvisatory nature of the music keeps everything honest, intimate, and in the moment. Through this work I’ve been able to explore new techniques of audio manipulation, sampling, and audio-visual storytelling I’ve never tried before, and I’m very excited to see the performance come together with the dancers.

“When I Left the Room” is a research dance performance of bodies that acknowledge their interdependency. A reflection on identity, culture, and human relationships. Inside a “room” the bodies negotiate possibilities of being in togetherness and physically experimenting, exploring notions of adaptation, agency, and connectedness. Intensively physical, playing out on/in shifting spaces, boxes, rooms. The work is interested in how we understand and perceive the world around us and how it impacts on our relationships, given one’s constantly changing point in space/time. A movement exploration and translation of today's internal, social, and relational conflicts on human bonds in a modern society, where human bonds have become light and loose.

-Anderson Carvalho, project choreographer

“Thought provoking. Forward thinking…” - Outline dance

"The choreography is potent. The dancers are fabulous. The muted palette of costumes lends itself to the body being the primary mode of expression. With Faheem Bardien’s lighting design (always exceptional to see this lighting artist at work) ​and the original sound composition by Adam Claussen, When I Left the Room is an exciting new piece of dance theatre." -Robyn Cohen, The Cape Robyn

Read the full review here.

The various dance scenes in the documentary De Hemelse Bloem were choreographed by Thu Hang Pham in collaboration with the film's director Tessa van der Riet.  Filmed at the Museum of Humanity in Zaandam, the dancers performed the choreography over several takes to a mix of original and temporary music, all of which was adapted in post-production to fit the needs of the film, some of which were set in slow motion shots.  The final scene in the film showcasing the full cast of dancers was however performed naturally with the soundtrack already near its final form, and can be heard below:

To read more about the soundtrack of De Hemelse Bloem, click here.