CHARCO

CHARCO (Spanish for ‘puddle') is a sound, video and performance installation where the body serves as a technology to rediscover its somatic devices as well as a new pathway to be alive and take care of our environment. Drawing from feminist science-fiction, the work is situated in an imaginary future in which we see a group of humans that have never experienced nature and have therefore a different understanding of the sensorial world. It aims to articulate the importance of a bodily experience, triggering imagination and ancestral memories of what it once meant to be human.

The choreographic scores explore bodies as porous and networked, forming collaborative techno-organisms and temporary micro-ecologies within the larger context of data overload and environmental collapse. The work considers choreography as a field that can highlight evolutionary patterning within and between bodies through the artificial technologies. The dancers navigate scores, which focus on feeds of sensorial data, a processing of fleshly information, and the exchange of affect and impact between themselves and the installation.

The responsive technology element of the project was developed in a residency at De Montfort University in collaboration with creative technologist Craig Appleby. The idea of working with technology was to create a kinetic relationship in which the technology would serve to open a portal for the audience to witness the performer’s consciousness and willingness to awaken memories of nature in the physical environment.

Ubera had filmed videos of nature as well as collective moments where humans interact with machinery. The installation was choreographed in a way where some of these videos were projected in the shape of a puddle (CHARCO) onto the floor via kinetic technology. The videos were activated when the performers tried to articulate memories of nature via sound, touch, laughter or proximity and distance. This way creating a cybernetic relationship where both the performer and the technology inform and affect the other, contributing to the choreographic process.

But it is also about the body as a technology itself. The devices that the body can offer: the ear, the mouth, eyes and the skin. These do not belong to an individual body but only manifest and operate when plugged in to other human and more-than-human interfaces.

Ultimately the piece navigates these spaces within and between bodies in an imaginary way, giving attention to the indivisibility of the organic and the artificial; the dancing body as the cyborg body, sharing its somatic technologies and inviting audiences into a diffracted screen time and a pooling of corporeality.

A new iteration of CHARCO premiered at the Dance Space, South East Dance Brighton in October 2023.

COLLABORATORS
Concept & Choreography: Pepa Ubera
Performance & Co-creation: Flora Baltz, Samir Kennedy,
Tania Soubry and Laura Doehler
Creative Producer: Zarina Rossheart
Creative Technology: Craig Appleby
Dramaturgical Support: Martin Hargreaves
Costume: Lambdog1066
Sound: Laur Rozier
Videos: Pepa Ubera/ Octopus video: Michele Watson
Post-production: Gerard Ortín & Jesus Ubera
VFX: Rob Heppell
Lighting design: Chiron Stamp

COMMISSIONING CREDITS
The premier of CHARCO at the Dance Space was co-commissioned
by South East Dance and Sadler’s Wells Theatre.
The piece was realised using public funds from Arts Council
England. The work was developed in residencies at South East
Dance (2023), Sadler’s Wells Theatre (2023), Wainsgate Dances
(2023), Institute of Creative Technologies at De Montfort University
(2023), Siobhan Davies Dance (2020) and Dance4 (2019).

Images: Charco by Pepa Ubera, The Dance Space, Brighton 2023. Photo: Henri Kesielewski