Corpus Null explores the positioning of the body within capitalism as both its function and its evasion.
Meet Saara Roppola, a visual-performance artist and butoh dancer who has trained in Europe and Japan since 2013. Performing internationally since 2014, this is their debut directing and producing a butoh choreography for an ensemble cast.
Tell us about the show in 100 words or less
Corpus Null is a performance work that inhabits the intensity between the desiring and desired. Inspired by Deleuze and Guattari’s concept Body Without Organs, this work of butoh dance theatre reflects on the positioning of the body within capitalism as both its function and its evasion. This tension is mirrored in cycles of symbiotic genesis and extinction and attempts to exist between becoming and undoing, in the void of unattainable desire. It is a collaboration with sound artist Orthotyp-a and director Saara Roppola with an ensemble of performers: Cieon Hilton, Rufio Max, El Pantaleon, and Alana Brekelmans.
Anywhere Festival takes place anywhere but a theatre. Tell us about your venue. What is it about your space that adds to your audience experience?
We are performing at Elements Collective, one of the hubs. It’s actually exciting for me (Saara) to have a venue with a stage as a clean canvass, as I’m used to performing in unusual spaces usually, such as clubs, galleries, streets, outdoor festivals, basements, warehouses.
What is your creative process like?
I improvise (butoh/movement) embodied images and ideas that have come from researching the subjects for the show ( In this case: Body without organs, symbiotic genesis, and extinction). The music and movement score is then developed in the form of images and poetic instructions for the sound designer and performers. We refine the details together as we practice in the studio. We are thrilled to be collaborating with Orthotyp-a as we love their sonic response to the work. This will be the first presentation of the performance as a creative development and I am keen for audience feedback to further develop the show!
Image: Megan Keene
Tell us your origin story. How did your collaboration start?
I got kicked out of ballet school as a child and started to do weird expressionistic dances in my lounge room. I’ve made art ever since.
I got into intensive Butoh training with Masaki Iwana and Stefano Taiuti while living in Europe from 2012 - 2016. I’ve had a few trips to dance in Japan with various Masters and companies and trained with Zen Zen Zo here in Brisbane.
In 2017 I started teaching/facilitating Butoh from my Brisbane based studio, AXIS. Since 2019 I have also produced studio jam events called POLLINATOR with butoh dancers and sound artists. This is a great way to connect local underground movers and sound makers so we can play together. I’m usually a solo performance artist, but I thought it’d be fun to make a work with multiple bodies and push and pull where the work could go with a group. The group of artists I’m working with is pulled from these activities so we already have a great creative connection.
Who is your perfect audience member? Who is going to LOVE this event?
The perfect audience member loves niche, weird, underground, art stuff.
People with overlapping multiple identities, influencers, pushers, pullers, deterritorialised personalities, time shifted identities, cross political shape-shifters, biologically amorphic creatures, 4th dimentional spectral travellers, fearless masochistic labour machines, macho mechanicalised forces, reactive escapist dreamers, existential botanists, anyone acutely aware of their alienated mindfulness, those that like art, music, bodies, organs, uncertainty, or anyone who laughed at this list at all will love it.
‘Corpus Null’ plays the 2021 Anywhere Festival on 8 & 23 May at Elements Collective in The Valley.
