l i s t e n i n g – sound narratives of a dance

di Sara Mikolai

Sound installation and performance

In collaboration with FUORIMARGINE- dance and performing arts production center of Sardinia

Performance, installation, sound concept, recordings, print work Sara Mikolai

music, sound design Isuru Kumarasinghe

Li s t e n i n g – sound narratives of a dance is an invitation to listen: to a body, to a dance, to a landscape, to sounds and silences. It is an exploration of dance movements and how they can be shaped and experienced when attention begins not with sight but with hearing: how does what we see change, transform, become, appear, disappear or remain if we experience it from sound?

The work takes shape through a series of walks in the city and woods, in which the choreographer and artist noticed the effects of listening to the environment on her body: in the way it moves, how it feels, connects and reprocesses internal and external worlds. Listening practice meets her movement practice, in a first-person confrontation with a reflection that, on various levels, is influencing and shaping her approach to dance, and her listening to the historical, contemporary and mythological narratives and vocabulary of Bharatanatyam dance.

Sara Mikolai is a choreographer and interdisciplinary artist of Tamil origin from Sri Lanka, based in Berlin. In her work she focuses on a critical and poetic engagement with dance epistemologies. Through an interdisciplinary approach she works primarily with live performance, sound, video, installation, printmaking and writing. Since 2015 she has been exploring the relationship between movement, body and sound and deepening her insights into a practice where listening and movement complement and influence each other. She has been studying and training in Bharatanatyam since 1994 under the guidance of Diana Mikolai at the Abhinaya Dharpana Indian Dance School in Berlin. She graduated in Dance, Context and Choreography from the Inter-University Center for Dance – HZT Berlin (University of the Arts Berlin) and in the MFA program in Performing Arts at the University of the Arts of Iceland, Reykjavik. He also holds a diploma in Bharatanatyam from the Oriental Fine Arts Academy in London. He is currently doing research in the Postgraduate MPhil in Fine Arts program at the Postgraduate Institute of Humanities and Social Sciences (PGIHS) / Peradeniya University, in Kandy, Sri Lanka.