Animare –
A piece from the sacred clown wrapped in plastic shedding skins in the Polymer Lodge.
Animare is change
Transformation
Synthesis
Sacred Dance and Movement Theory
Contraries
The Sacred Clown
The Contrary Man
Heyoka
Yurodivy
When it is plenty I starve
When it is barren I feast
Background:
ANIMARE is a work in progress, an ever-growing project.
It started as Animare I – a 12 hour dance performance/performance installation at the Nashville Sideshow Fringe Festival in 2012:
- concept and physical performance: Aaron Beck
- original musical score: Adam Beck
- word collage and poetry reading: Mira Schiefer
- tape sculptures /light elements: Aaron Beck
- performance space: the Biltmore Theater lobby
Animare I was performed twelve hours straight and two days in a row in the Biltmore Theater lobby. Inspired by the philosophy of the sacred, crazy and contrary wisdom of the heyoka and sacred clowns Aaron Beck developed the concept for Animare. Animare is a performance installation that functions as a deliberate mis-performance disrupting and breaking with our concepts of time and space. The performative leitmotivs of Animare are
a) the focus on the negative space created by the performer’s body and
b) our manipulation of time
Audience members were invited to bring objects or/and manipulate the performance space while Aaron Beck continued performing for more than 12 hours changing the negative space surrounding the performing body. Eerie transparent tape statues, the shed skins of a petroleum culture, lit the marble entrance hall of the Biltmore theater in which the performance took place. The endurance performance, a pseudo-ritualistic dance set to a haunting New Agy music (the electronic sound scape composed by Adam Beck) explored the paradox of our hyper-modern consumer society´s craving for mythologies and rites. A craving that so often results in the cultivation of an artificial primitivism and in blatant cultural appropriation.
Below you can watch a video that was taken during the performance. Although it is only a small aspect of the 12 hour performance it gives a first impression of the equally enchanting and disturbing nature of Animare:
Picture Gallery:
aaron leonard beck 