SYNOPSIS - ON / OFF
ON / OFF is a dance work designed for teenagers
and adults where a quartet of dancers performs on
an unusual and wondrous machine: an oversized
treadmill.
On this rolling and confining surface, physical
movement is both restrained and ecstatic, exhilarated
and acrobatic. Together and alone, the performers
address themes such as identity, self fulfillment,
determination, coexistence, freedom, exhaustion and
the unending feelings and sensations that makeup
the complexity of life. The treadmill is a meeting place
where the characters seek to understand their place
in the world. Sometimes at the mercy, sometimes
in control of this intriguing, unpredictable and
mobilizing machine, they play with time and suspend
actions in space in order to dig out the details of
gestures, questions and interactions. The forever
forward moving device becomes a metaphor for the
passage from childhood to adulthood. It is the path
that we choose to travel and the life that we learn
to tame.