A FOUR-DIMENSIONAL AUDIO-VISUAL TAPESTRY THAT MOVES BEYOND WHAT IS KNOWN INTO THE REALM OF THE IMAGINATION IN A VENUE THAT CELEBRATES EXPANSIVE THINKING.

Reaching for Nothing

CREATED BY
PETER HATCH (DIRECTOR AND COMPOSER)
DERECK REVINGTON (DIRECTOR AND DESIGNER
DAVID EARLE (CHOREOGRAPHY)

Presented by NUMUS & Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics, 2008

Collaboratively conceived by composer Peter Hatch and visual artist Dereck Revington, with dance choreographer David Earle

The work of a composer is normally measured in time; the work of an architect conventionally measured in space. As collaborators, we began by considering the temporal aspects of space and the spatial aspects of sound. Soon, underlying shape-shifting and time-shifting themes began moving through the piece.  Reaching for Nothing: Water's Thirst is not an opera, a dance or a film; there is no narrative or program to follow. It is what might happen when one risks dissolving categories, as currents in a stream interflow, wind and unwind in a perpetual dance of becoming. We draw on poetic texts both ancient and modern, bridging east with west, the inside world with the outside, evoking the haunting enigmas of time through music, sound, light, video and dance. In Reaching for Nothing: Water's Thirst, we try to make sense of our existence through the visual and the aural and from a range of perspectives, including those of the philosopher, the poet, the priest, the shaman and the scientist.