Rangashankara

The Doorway (No admittance for those under 15 years)

The Doorway’ is a collection of stories woven into a physical narrative examining the nature of our physical inhabiting of ‘closed’ and ‘open’ spaces. The spaces considered in the piece vary along a continuum from the literal to the metaphorical; the body's response to space itself, and the various associations that spaces evoke, connects the diverse material. Some of this material is loosely autobiographical; the rest has been drawn from images or impressions of life around me, some from fairy tales and folk songs, and some from entirely imaginary experiences. The narratives are communicated through bodily images, gestures, and sounds [mumblings / chants], with minimal spoken text. They sometimes feature unambiguous beginnings and endings, but, more frequently, begin in the middle and are then abandoned, or conclude abruptly, or begin independently only to subsequently merge with the others. The piece does not look to convey the specific details of these stories so much as to use them as provocations evoking stories from the lives of the spectators, who are encouraged to begin their individual journeys of personal associations.