Conversation notes

These are my notes from a conversation with Laura (who I interviewed earlier in the year about her memories of the Arcade) after she saw the performance where she shared some of her thoughts:

The building should be listed as a cast member- the dancer's relationship to it gave it character, personality.
It successfully created a structure to work with the 'accidents', moments where people not involved in the project became a part of it.
It made you look at everything differently.
'Mirror duet' was the "most effective" part- it brought the two sides of the Arcade together.
The piece as a whole created a situation where there was a lot for the audience to "puzzle out".

Her comment that "it made you look at everything differently" is particularly exciting for me to hear, as part of the intention was to re-contextualise and de-familiarise the space to allow multiple identities for the space, and create new relationships to it.

And although there are several parts of the piece that I find particularly satisfying, the 'mirror duet' is definitely one of them. This is the section where Amy and Nadia perform the same phrase across the length of the Arcade. One performs it on the right, one on the left, so they mirror each other. It is discussed more in this post and can be seen below.





It is one of the most successful moments in terms of connecting the two sides, but also in challenging the audience's perception of being able to see the whole picture, imparting a fuller understanding of the sense of the spatial extent of the Arcade, and in playing with the inaccessibility of the interior.