DANCINGAT THE EDGEOF THEWORLD TITAS presentsDiavolo in “Fluid Infinities”


byManuelMendoza


group brings its latest piece, Fluid Infinities, toDallasCity Performance Hall, presented by TITAS onMarch 27-28.ManuelMendoza spoke to artistic director JacquesHeimabout his troupe.


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Fluid Infinities completes a trilogy.What’s the piece about? It startedwith three questions:Where dowe come from?Where arewe going?And howdid everything start? That’s the theme and those are the questions I’maskingmyself kind of regularly. Iwanted to do a piece that is very surreal, that has a very ritualistic aspect.At the end of the day, our planet is this tiny particle in the universe andwe are just hang- ing at the edge of it.


Youlike toworkwithlarge structures.Where do they come from? If I had to create a piece on the bare stage, Iwould not knowwhat to do. Iwould be lost. In another life, Iwish I could be an architect.My inspiration iswalking the streets ofmany cities I travel to, looking at the relation and the interaction of the human bodywith the architec- tural environment.


Thework always startswith the structure and then I collaboratewith architects and sculptors,with designers, andwe build it. Then like chil- dren on a playground, I tellmy dancers, “It’s playtime.Go discover


what the structure tells you,what kind ofmovement you can you per- formon and around it.” So the dancers really create themovement. What I’mdoingmore nowis conceptualizing, directing.At times, I call myself an architect ofmotion, even though I knownothing about architecture.


What’s the inspirationfor themoonlike structure inFluid Infinities? It startedwith the first piece in the trilogy, ForeignBodies,which is basi- cally a cube, and the second, Fearful Symmetries, also has a cube. I need- ed to go against those hard edges, something that had a curve and sen- sual lines. I knewright away thatwould be a sphere or an egg or some- thing that has themetaphor of something infinite, something futuristic or fromthe beginning of time or out in space.


Yourworklooks dangerous to perform.What’s a typical Diavolo rehearsal like? We hold three or four auditions a year, becauseDiavolo is not for every-


hrills abound in thework ofDiavolo, a LosAngeles-based compa- ny that uses elaborate sets and highly physicalmovement to reflect the intensity and chaos of contemporary life. The acrobatic


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Feb-Apr 2015


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DANCE!NORTHTEXAS a publicationof the dance council ofnorthtexas vol 18 •no 1


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