Humanhood is a dance company founded by Rudi Cole and Júlia Robert Parés, bringing the world of physics and Eastern mysticism into the exploration of the body and movement. Based in Birmingham and Barcelona, this young and bold company is stepping into the world of dance with a special and unique touch. Here, they write about their work.

We live in a fast-paced world, bombarded from a certain kind of information, where we are pushed into following our impulses... everything feels like an excuse to escape the present. For us our work is a way to stop, pay attention and listen to what underlies this superficial madness. The simplicity of a moment and the complexity of sensations that arise from being it. We aspire to envelop a fraction of one persons life span and share an experience for the audience to tap into an alternate reality...

Us humans, we are explorers at heart. We have been looking for answers to questions that have been posed since the start of humankind as we know it. Looking at the stars we ask ourselves: Where do we come from? Why are we here? What is our purpose? Where are we evolving to? Our personal curiosity for these questions have brought us close to science, in particular physics and astrophysics, discovering and exploring what is around us to be able to understand better our place in this world. The progress of science from the classic mechanism vision, where the world is seen like a machine, with its different parts, that can be observed without interfering in it and predict its outcomes with relative simplicity; to a world that is connected to the observer, with a certain degree of unpredictability, the quantum world and the way it behaves, which nobody really understands yet.

Physics is an abundant source of inspiration for our work, and at the same time a pool of unanswered questions which keeps our curiosity alive. When reading about black holes colliding, or galaxies orbiting around each other, when thinking of the infinity small or the never ending magnitudes, our minds cannot possibly grasp what all this could mean and yet while we are busy with our lives this is happening in this universe. We like to play with these bewildering phenomena and feel how it affects the way we move, we relate and perform.

‘There are only two ways to live your life. One is as though nothing is a miracle. The other is as though everything is a miracle.’ - Einstein. The idea of how we look at reality is very important in how we develop our work. We do not wish to enforce a narrative or an emotional feeling upon the audience, but instead give moments of voidness and yet full zeal: points where time doesn’t exist or it is being suspended. The suspense of a moment in time, a state of nothingness yet being totally delivered to it. The observer, in this case the audience, has its own role and responsibility in it...

Our roots into these states and sensitivity to simplicity comes from our inspiration and curiosity for Eastern mysticism. We feel there is a need for science, spirituality and physicality to join together, and as science develops its understandings we believe there will be more and more integration of the three. ‘It is the understanding of the totality of life in which every form of fragmentation has ceased’ - Jiddu Krishnamurti.

Bringing the Western physics and the Eastern mysticism into the body, into the cells that form us, letting both approaches collide into our atoms, is a way for us to respond and be part of the evolution of humankind. It is a way for us to join history and future into creativity that arises in the physicality itself. We don’t intend to translate or interpret anything but rather embody our curiosity for the world with mindfulness and spontaneity.

We perceive each of our dance productions as a whole, where the light, sound and movement are interconnected, creating a distinctive world that has a unique nature, becoming one with the space and time, its rhythms and its silence. The same happens with the dancers, the symbiosis of the minds and the synchronicity of the bodies play an important touch in our pieces. We share a common state, cradling space and transmuting time.

We are attracted to geometry as a way to relate with space and the spine as a channel to expand and unlock deeper states of awareness and sensitivity. We are still in the process of developing our movement, we don’t think we will never reach a moment where we are totally at ease with it, and hopefully it doesn’t happen. Trying to always go deeper into what already exists and, most important, keeping the curiosity for how we move and what we move for is the secret to an ever evolving dance artist.

We don’t intend to change the world, this is a way for us to not surrender to escapism, to engage with the moment and share that awareness and passion for life with other humans, either on stage or in live.

humanhood.net
@humanhooddance
facebook.com/HumanhoodCompany

Wild Card: Humanhood
24 & 25 May
at the Lilian Baylis Studio, Sadler’s Wells, London
Tickets and info: sadlerswells.com