Into The Dark

How do Western ways of thinking shape our social and individual perceptions of darkness and light? With Into The Dark, Jess Curtis and his diverse ensemble give this question a concrete experiential space.

Six blind, visually impaired and sighted performers move through a landscape of darkness and light. Visual certainties are increasingly shaken, challenging an aesthetic experience that brings the physical and the subconscious into focus.

A destabilizing choreography around supposed truths; a rebellion against established categories of knowledge and action; a tangible performance that critically questions the omnipresent dominance of the eye.

With Into The Dark, Jess Curis/Gravity continues to explore a stage aesthetic that borrows from elements of accessibility. Practices from blind culture such as audio description, tactile and acoustic guidance systems (so-called wayfinding), and immersive seating become part of a choreographic setting that adopts conventional strategies for orienting oneself in the world, thus opening performance art to blind and visually impaired audiences.

In the context of the seventh fold "Expansions of perception" Tanzfabrik Berlin shows works that make it possible to experience voids within our perception. How are we unconsciously interwoven with the world and things? And how does our perception expand when everything visual is temporarily absent?