Andreea David and Ingrid Bergher Myhre met during a performance residency and STAFF is their first collaborative product. It started with questions, search of personalized / simplified definitions for the big words in our daily conversations, our common interest in body and say regarded as two basic tools for any kind of performance, but in the same time difficult to bring together.

Classic performance = dance for untrained bodies

Tradition in performance = to believe in (your) body which measures and transmits a moving sculpture

Performance = body as object-idea

A question that kept coming back under many forms in the conversations related to work between the two: how can you convey what you do not know, which is the set of skills, trust, presence of mind or improv that should be trained by yourself in order to teach your ignorance to the person in front of you? When I say “empathy”, “emotion”, “intelligence”, “support”, “love”, “revolution”, “universal” and so on and you ask me to explain in a few words, not to define what you already know, no – what we “all” already know, how am I supposed to explain?

Definitions crush into pieces the simple idea that, behold, we competently master common terms.

The use of simple tools – a ruler, a brush, a saw, ax, screwdriver, scissors – should enter, along with the understanding of the universe when we use the word, in the set of common and probable skills of two similar bodies, conventionally abled and having a minimum of comparable social experiences. Yes, you take the ruler or the square ruler and use them in measuring, isn’t it? You hit with the axe, hold the knife and cut. But each body offers different solutions when it comes to interaction, with even the simplest tool, depending on its set of cultural, social, locative experiences and expectations. We don’t similarly cut a paper in two pieces using the scissors. There are so many possible variables. We do not have the same understanding of that what we use together, even if we rely on the same (conventionally presumed) language skills.

A girl from Romania who finished the faculty of architecture, a girl from Norway, choreography student, both trying to define to each other, recycling and taking over again, stuff in English, on a territory somewhere in-between.

Universe = Something black with white spots

Work = Something only Possible When you find it

Happiness = Something you feel sometimes

The performance of Andrea and Ingrid from WASP is powerful because of the body-tools-words mixing in which the two artists cast terms to each other and respond to them through posts, utilitarian gestures, words; even the body-sculpture-instrument – the one of the classic performance – appears, in saw noise, in the constant background of the words we know.

Andreea David is an architect and performer. In 2013, thanks to a wild card offered by 4Culture in Life Long Burning, Andreea attended for 6 weeks at the master’s program ex.e.r.c.e at CNN Montpellier.

Ingrid Berger Myhre studied at Laban Centre (UK) and she is a graduate of MTD (AHK, 2010). Her research on autonomous power of the body and voice of the performer resulted in her first independent piece, Current (2013), with the support of Dansateliers. She received the DanceWEB Scholarship (2010) and support from various Norway Grants for artistic creativity. She is attending from October 2013 the Master in choreography at ex.e.r.c.e. from CCN Montpellier.

STAFF was at Explore Dance Festival 2014 on October 12.