janejane productions: PUBLISHED WORKS

Movement Research PERFORMANCE JOURNAL #38

Noemi Segarra interviewed by Jane Gabriels
Movement Research PERFORMANCE JOURNAL #38

http://www.movementresearch.org/performance_journal/currentissue/

Noemi Segarra was selected to be part of The Young Roots performance series at Hostos Center for the Arts and Culture, funded in part by the Rockefeller Foundation NYC Cultural Innovation Fund 2011-12. Her new work, De Rumbo De Rumba, features drummer Henry Cole, lighting designer Dave Overcamp and includes Dean Moss who is supporting the project with creative feedback. Noemi will present De Rumbo De Rumba on April 7 and 8, 2011.

I have worked with Noemi for over ten years and as this is her first full-length evening performance, I didn't want to miss talking to her about it. We checked in just before she began her first rehearsals.

JG: How would you describe your physical research into this material? Is it an extension or re-evolution of previous dance work you've made?

NS: The physical research is fresh and recent, yet it evolves around some ideas that have been with me simmering for a while. There are a few "recurrent themes" that show up again and again in my work; the body in its exuberance and vulnerability exposed, stamina or endurance, repetition along with it, transgression, sometimes sheer obsession. These are definitely some connecting dots. There are concerns that I need to address and put myself in, creating situations as to deal with them onstage in front of a live audience. More than anything, there are images that I have envisioned or dreamt, that I need to explore kinesthetically. Also ideas that I need to have happen now, from a different perspective and experience perhaps than years before.

I am thinking about things like throwing, repetition, exhaustion all in and through the body. Now more conceptually I am also thinking of collapse: things we thought we knew and that "were stable" and now they might not be so. All I can think of is that in times of crisis or emergency like we are now living, that remaining open, alert, responsive, creative and willing to change, that these might be keys to elegant survival or at least possible adjustment techniques. I think that as dancers, we "know" or somehow understand this from working with/in the body.

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de rumbo de rumba

I think happiness is such a transient and evasive experience. So De Rumbo De Rumba has built in double connotation in the title. Even in midst of crisis, there is hope, if not utopia or at least fantasy. The desire for celebration or fiesta can serve as an escape. Derrumbar, en español, means to knock down, demolish or collapse. In the pronunctiation of the title De Rumbo De Rumba we could also understand or hear in Spanish derrumbo derrumba, which translates to: I knock down, you knock down. Now De Rumbo De Rumba literally means heading to a rumba. In Spanish a rumba has several meanings. It can mean party or fiesta. So the title implies we are heading to a celebration of some sort. Una rumba also can refer to the Cuban rhythm, dance and song of African origin. In the work we allude to both la fiesta y la rumba cubana.

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choreographer Merian Soto

Merian´s work is rooted in the experience of the body, its energy and how to improvise form there. She works with "energy modes.” These are tasks given as a point of departure in the mindbody to generate improvisations or instant compositions. Both yoga and Merians’ work come together to open possibilities for me. I need to have plenty of room and freedom in order to create.

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drummer Henry Cole

I have seen Henry "out there" more than a couple of times when in performance. Every time I have heard him play in NYC or PR, I have been able to identify when he takes off on to journey off the stage on to different voyages. I have felt compelled, drawn, invited, moved by it. I don’t quite know how to put it in words, it’s something about leaving “reality" for a while and traveling with the performer or being transported to this very other place while you are still in your chair. It is something about creating right where you are a sense of otherness on to a more expansive or imaginative one ... like an altered state of consciousness without drugs.

JG: Like an opening of possibilities to create more?

NS: Yes, right on Jane! A right to dream out loud and see, feel and be in the dream.

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Puerto Rico

I have always made work about Puerto Rico because Puerto Rico is very much in me, in whatever I do. Even when I lived in NY, the sense of heat, the body in this kind of weather and open space, the sense of Caribe/Caribbean, the ocean...it is always there. With “en tránsito,” its about wondering or craving for home. Where is home? Now I am here, home en Puerto Rico, yet I need NY to make my work. It’s a beauty full paradox that fills me with questions that make me make work. NYC has the resources, the interest, the openness, the possibilities, the venues, connections, the visibility, the cash, the umph! I heart more NYC now that I visit it!