Arcane Collective's 'Return To Absence' Morleigh Steinberg and Oguri talk Beckett

Arcane Collective's new piece (premiering at the festival) Return To Absence is inspired by Samuel Beckett’s trilogy of novels, Molloy, Malone Dies and The Unnamable. Why use literature as the basis for a piece of movement? Why try to transfer ideas between two very distinct media (language and movement)?

Morleigh: There’s so much physical imagery in text; any good literature is descriptive, both emotionally and physically, making it a resource. Just like getting inspiration from hearing a piece of music or having a dream. And then, texts communicate an atmosphere and a feeling. When you read something and it makes you feel something, it suggests the question: how could you communicate that feeling in movement?

Oguri: Although there is no speech from the performers themselves in the piece, we think of dance as language in the body. Beckett’s writing is very pure, pure, pure… his choice of words is very pure [refined –focused]… [in total, the image he creates] is like a pure, concrete painting, but at the same time, very abstract. And I think that’s very much like dance.

Beckett’s use of language is often quite mathematical – he’ll cycle through all possible variations of a sentence, playing with the grammatical properties to show both the fallibility and the possibility of language. Did this methodical treatment of language feed into the choreography?

Morleigh: He does do that, but he also has a flow, whether it’s [depicting] consciousness or unconsciousness, and he plays with that too. And this is similar to improvisation in dance – you just go and are carried by momentum [and play with weight]. Although we didn’t use words in the piece, there’s voice in the soundtrack, which gives its own rhythm to the movement.

Oguri: [In Beckett’s language] there are repetitions, overlaps, reflections, repulsions… words interrupt the flow and have the effect of anti-gravity [going against gravity]. [The way he manipulates grammar in his sentences] is like [a dancer] bending a joint.

How would you describe your sense of the worlds Beckett creates in the trilogy? What words do you associate with these worlds?

Morleigh: Rot. And some kind of strange reflection [internal reflection of the characters].

Oguri: Very unsure. [uncertainty]

Could you describe the movement? Is it ‘contemporary’? Are there influences from other genres of dance? Or is it indescribable?

Morleigh: Kind of indescribable – it’s hard to categorise.

Oguri: We’re quite borderline… very close to the theatre, but still very much in the dance world. Because we believe dance is a language too.

Morleigh: We make dance out of very human movement. It’s about finding movement out of sensitivity to your environment, whether it’s natural, or man-made, or your emotional environment.

Watch Oguri perform here.

Return To Absence opens at Project Arts Centre's Space Upstairs on May 21st. Book tickets here.

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