Press Reviews       16 (R)EVOLUTIONS Press Reviews of the German Premiere on June 22, 2006     back    Mark Coniglio is a well-known pioneer when it comes to new technology; he put the finishing technological touches on his piece during two Stuttgart work residencies benefiting from the Forum Neues Musiktheater’s knowledge. And thus we experience a beautiful new world in which images, movements, and sounds—sometimes technologically loud, sometimes pleasing to the ear in the conventional sense—are mutually dependent: a point of light that swells with the intensity of breathing pulsates on the body of a woman; then with a bestial barking she muddles the projected patterns. Later the dancers’ bodies will displace the patterns of a wallpaper of light and will multiply with the help of black-and-white shadows. Perhaps this miracle of light is a symbol for the maximum performances human reason is capable of and which is in the most superb contrast to the beast that still slumbers in man’s breast. What is most impressive about 16 [R]evolutions? The body is not simply a projection surface and trigger for complex processes, but intertwines aspects of the subject matter and technical wonders into an overall idea. Stuttgarter Nachrichten New York media artist Mark Coniglio and his dance company Troika Ranch have presented a fascinating new computer technology at the Forum Neues Musiktheater. It was also here that a year ago William Forsythe demonstrated the acoustic computer software with which his dancers produce their own accompanying “music” as they perform. Now, with Coniglio, the image has been added: computer-generated graphics and video images that are not simply projected on to a screen or on to dancers—as has been the practice until now—but which emerge from the dance through the movements and sounds of the dancers. The result looks like a mix of Pina Bausch and Lara Croft—traditional dance theater combined with sophisticated computer graphics. (…) Overly amplified cereal chewing generates geometric graphics, lines deflect like nervous indicators, an orange network undulates back and forth over the dancers according to the level of sound—fascinating images whose inventor and programmer Mark Coniglio describes as “more Mondrian than Klimt.” Eßlinger Zeitung “I’m telling you: this is a very special place.” Mark Coniglio knows what he’s talking about. A composer, programmer, and media artist, the New Yorker, who once studied with Morton Subotnick in California, is one of the internationally recognized pioneers of a multimedia performance art between video, music, and the movements of the human body. And as such he has seen many different places, among which Stuttgart’s Forum Neues Musiktheater ranks with the best. Coniglio says so not because of the particular ambience of the Römerkastell. And he also doesn’t mean the highly motivated public that regularly attends the performances of the three-year-old Forum. For him it is solely a matter of the excellent opportunities that this laboratory— a laboratory devoted to the most contemporary performance art beyond established categories despite having only a modest budget—offers for his work. Coniglio, together with choreographer Dawn Stoppiello and the Troika Ranch dance company, partially developed the production 16 [R]evolutions at the Forum Neues Musiktheater. And the company also performed an early version of the work at the Forum last November, before the debut performance in New York. Thus, strictly speaking, the current German premiere has returned the project to the place where it started. (…) Despite all the dramaturgy this is in no way a piece in which the dancers adhere to a strictly ordained choreography following a thoroughly composed music. It is true that a good part of the music was composed beforehand, if only because of systemic boundaries that still exist today. But there are passages in which the movement of the dancers steers the sounds and images. And this means that the choreography does not set down everything in every detail but leaves room for an intuitive, improvising approach. The composer emerges as programmer, not only in the popular informatics sense of the word, but also very literally: he doesn’t write notes on paper, but defines the basic rules according to which video, music, and dance react to one another and conflate into a whole. (…) Today, however, the high degree of integration of media and art forms goes far beyond traditional ways of combining the musical, pictorial, and performing arts. Should the work of the Forum Neues Musiktheater in the Römerkastell not continue here in the same way in the future, the world won’t come to a halt. The development will continue elsewhere. Still, it would be a pity to lose the location and the resources that have been built up with such great passion. Stuttgarter Zeitung
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