The Performance Ensemble

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The exploration of the use of echome as a tool for making theatrical performance has been undertaken through an ongoing collaboration with The Performance Ensemble, a company of ‘older performers, making art with the experience of age’, directed by Alan Lyddiard. The use of echome with The Performance Ensemble revolves around three key areas: the liveness of the theatrical medium and the co-presence of audience and performers; movement as a key signal of (a)liveness; and sound as an indicator of movement (in the sense that movement is the cause of the sound and is perceived in the sound as a form of sonic gesture). In the process of exploring the use of echome towards the creation of material for live performance, it could be said that there is a conscious piling and mixing of several processes of animation. The workshops with the company focus on the creation of simple scores which enable the unfolding of sound and movement as part of the same organic process and the investigation of sound as a stimulus for association and memory.