CHIAROSCURO

2019

Choreography and Performance: AL Garcia

This movement piece explores and questions the polarity of the world through a devise such as the net and play of lights.

The net as a huge piece of material implies labor and hard work (or life) as it is, in the same manner, the choreographer intended to show images of how a simple occupational material can express both the light and the dark aspects of this worldly place we live in. How can a net help plants to be protected and nurtured but traps and catches fishes and other animals? A material that can signify both life and death. It all boils down to how people perceive and utilizes technological materials or devices—to either help others or destruct one another.

In the field of visual arts, the term Chiaroscuro (from the Italian word which literally means light-dark) is prevalent in most notable works of Renaissance artists to express strong contrasts of light to achieve a sense of volume in composing three-dimensional figures which give a strong treatment and ambiance to the entire composition, Thus the play of the accessible lights are relevant to the piece.

Accompanied by vocal music of Hildegard of Bingen (A German Benedictine Abbess, writer, philosopher, Christian mystic and visionary. One of the best-known composers of sacred monophony.) to give the atmosphere of being inside of a sacred place with songs in Latin texts with words such as:
The Holy Spirit: living and life-giving,
The life that’s all things moving,
The root in all created being:
Of filth and much, it washed all the things clean—
Out-scrubbing guilty staining, its balm our wounds constraining—
And so its life with praise is shining,
Rousing and reviving all.

This piece is will remind us to pause and reflect on how we dance back to our roots. In times of crisis where man is overpowered by greed and his actions lead to destruction, we need healing from our mother (nature), a lullaby, a place of comfort and peace, to find beauty and joy amidst the worldly chaos, for in the end, we all go back to nature.

We are nature.