Ilya Vidrin
Attunement: That Which Cannot Be Measured, is a performance-workshop, which has been supported through creative residencies at the Harvard ArtLab and the New Museum (NYC).
Attunement is a meditation on social ethics, centering on an embodied physical literacy where music and dance function together as a primer for investigating the intimate labor of care in. Drawing from my doctoral research on the philosophy of partnering, the piece challenges the performers to encounter and attune to each other in real-time ad libitum. By modulating proximity, relative position, and point(s) of contact, the performers’ work is to practice consent, and to manifest care through their consensual receptivity.
Since the possibility of harm is always present in physical interaction, the quartet is continuously challenged to orient to each other with resilience.
The score for the durational work is the final movement of J.S. Bach’s Partita No. 2 in D Minor (BWV 1004), known as the Chaconne for Solo Violin. In an act of radical deconstruction, Attunement disrupts the untouchable canonization of Bach. Through transformations, fragmentations, and inversions, violinist Daniel Kurganov boldly confronts the Chaconne's iconic structure. Teasing out overlapping elements of movement and sound, Attunement investigates the ethical possibilities of orienting toward a score, toward an instrument, toward others.
The piece begins with a technologically-mediated duet. Establishing the interaction between movement and sound, Vidrin’s actions are captured by wearable technology. The movement is synthesized into a notation that is interpreted in real-time by Kurganov. As the piece develops, the wearable technology is removed and the audience is invited to sink into the kinesthetic realities of embodied interaction. When the performance section ends, the cast leads the audience into an immersive workshop on social ethics. Drawing on the choreographic structure of Attunement, the audience is guided through the slow, deliberate interaction.