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Tactile Sensations is a dance performance on the relationship between two bodies.

Through the dance performance, the contacts between the dancers reveal musical and luminous impulses in real-time. Energies of the touch between the bodies become sensitive, tangible, audible. The sounds reveal emotions, rhythms and impacts. The music created in real-time by the dancers evokes diverse, strong, fragile and transitory energies.

The choreographic score gives the audience a multi-sensory experience which explores the possibilities for interlacing with an interactive device able to augment the invisible impulses of the dancers’ bodies, making them perceptible.

The circular scenography is a space of meeting as well as a space of confrontation, a ring, an arena surrounded by the audience. Its light format makes it easy for the performance to be presented in non-conventional spaces – indoors or outdoors. The scenography can easily be installed on any given flat surface.

Artistic Theme

Tactile Sensations is a dance performance concerning touch in our post-industrial society.

The performance investigates the many levels and meanings of touch and its social construction: the connection to memory and human attachment, memory, emotion, desire, rejection… This investigation of touch within the performance is augmented and made more clearly perceptible to the audience by adding the aural sense in that each moment of touch produces a specific sound connected to the meaning and timing of this touch.

In our culture, vision is privileged and touch is conditioned by cultural rules. Rejecting traditional ocularcentrism of traditional performance, Tactile Sensations defies the vision of the spectator by putting forward touch as the triggering element for sound and light, depending on the degree of physical interaction between dancers, the intimacy of touch, and the degree of the exploration of intimate space versus public space. Therefore Tactile Sensations transforms the experience of sight by connecting audience vision to his/her own corporality.

Exploring bodies become bodies dancing these encounters: between dancer’s bodies, distance-proximity between bodies and parts of the body, which attract each other, repel, rub against, hesitate, and meet with each other until fusing.

Links between dance / music / lights / interactivity

Tactile Sensations is a performative and sensorial experience of the choreographic staging of touch. 
The technological innovation implies the conception of a reactive costume and dance floor, original interactive music and lighting as well as the development of software and an electronic platform capable of treating and translating in real time the information coming from the contact zones determined by the choreography.

The interaction between the bodies, the sound and the light, is based on a principle of conducting and increased electrostatic contact between the bodies of the dancers. Their interactive costumes are composed of surfaces of conductive textile.

Like the image of the positive and negative poles of an electrical circuit or force of attraction-repulsion of the magnet, various methods of interaction between the bodies are explored. To induce the perception of this invisible dimension, technical devices allow for the production of different sounds evolving in real time according to the quality of the touch and the parts of the body concerned.

Sonorous and visual artwork

The choreographic approach of this project is the composition of dance, sound and lights. 
Energies produced by the contact between the bodies become sensitive and audible. The sounds translate emotion, bodily states, and bodily impacts. The music produced in real-time evokes different kinds of energies strong, fragile or ephemeral.

Interactive devices

Constructing a language, a visual and aural score based on touch: exploring and defining sensitive and reactive zones.

Tactile Sensations puts forward the making of various interactive and tactile aural set-ups. For this performance, two different set-ups have been developed: a conductive/communicative /sensitive/sensory/reactive costume and a reactive dance floor.

- A reactive costume with various zones which react differently according to the location of the contact with the dancer's body.

- A reactive circular dance floor with a specific network which links various contact locations on the floor.

This set-up allows the questioning of degrees of proximity that we have with the other, according to the location of contact between bodies. Interfaces are the sensitive costume, the dance floor and the human body itself.

The contact sensors are integrated inside the dancer's costume. They allow the * contact with the skin of the second dancer. These sensors then send real time data to the computer which allows for real time interaction with the light and sound composition, according to the quality of the touch of the sensitive zones : strong or light for example.

For Tactile Sensations, Scenocosme has created a reactive costume for the dancers which allow them to have augmented bodies. Tactile contacts between dancers generate sound and lights for the performance.

The performance unfolds on a circular dance floor to enable a close relationship between the dancers. This dance floor can be installed inside or outside, in theatres, galleries or outdoor public spaces etc. and the performance can be experienced from any degree or angle and proximity. The dance floor defines the contact zones on the floor taking into consideration the desired proximities and distances between the dancers.

Context, collaborative team

Tactile Sensations is collaboration between:

K. Danse : The choreographers: Jean-Marc Matos et Anne Holst, pioneers in the field of choreographic writing and digital media, create dance performances with digital arts. (Price winner in the Bagnolet International Dance Festival). Their performances have toured around the world.

And

Scenocosme : Artists working with digital arts. Gregory Lasserre & Anaïs met den Ancxt, who combine digital art, music and architecture in order to conceive interactive installations which are sensitive and poetic. Scenocosme have exhibited their interactive installation artworks in many international biennials and digital art festivals around the world.

Partner : Ville de Toulouse, Conseil Régional Midi-Pyrénées, Conseil Général Haute-Garonne, Villeneuve-Tolosane (accueil en résidence), Centre Culturel Bellegarde, Toulouse (accueil en résidence). Cette création s’inscrit dans le cadre du projet euro-régional CorpusMedia 2011, en partenariat avec la Catalogne, la Région Languedoc-Roussillon et les Iles Baléares.

Previous performances of Escales tactiles

Scenocosme : Gregory Lasserre & Anais met den Ancxt - www.scenocosme.com