UNKNOWN.SÉANCE sums up a series of improvised performances initiated by Renata Piotrowska in 2008. The dance events making up the series, created each time in collaboration with another set of artists, have offered the public discoveries of new kinds of perception of the performance: by blindfolding the spectators and inviting them to take a trip inside their own inner sensitivity, they allowed an extraordinary experience of being immersed in the dancing action and following it with all their senses. UNKNOWN.SÉANCE is a choreographed reflection of the perception of dance, an attempt at transferring the discoveries from the respective parts of the series to the traditional form of a performance.
Does the experience of sensory perception change us as spectators? Can we apply this experience to any other encounter with dance? Can you see anything other than what you have just seen? Can you see something others cannot see? Is it real then? Does it perhaps happen that you cannot notice something that is real? What has to happen so that you might see it? Have you ever happened to consciously pay attention to your breathing? To see how others breathe? To experience a suspension of time at the moment of observation? Between entering space and the first step on the stage?
Performance inspired by “Phenomenology of perception” by Maurice Merlau-Ponty
