Rock, plastic, steel. Nature, culture, the imaginary. These are but some of the media and environments being explored by ‘HIgH Xposure’. HIgH Xposure is a radgroup of Toronto area climbers pushing different kinds of limits in vertical movement By combining the basic action elements of rock climbing and converting walls and spaces into a perpendicular stage they have created ‘rock climbing dance theatre’. In the tradition of Bandaloop but with a good measure of Cirque du Soleil thrown in this group explores the cross over of art and athletics in three dimensions. From transforming a local Toronto area indoor climbing gym into a theatre-not-in-the-round but into a theatre-in-the-vertical, to using the undergrid of a large concrete and steel bridge for a kind of ‘gorilla’ street theatre, to transforming a 100 year old Southern Ontario barn into a spectacle of the senses... HIgH Xposure is art in exhiliration. HIgH Xposure - putting exhiliration back into art. 1st Toronto Bridge Day - September 1995 (Yonge&StClair) CAMPUSPANICJuly1997 In Tensions TENSEGRITY ON SPADINA - March 1998 LIVESTOCK - Music Dance Festival, 1996 HIgH Xposure and the Total Eclipse of the Sun MAY 1994 HIgH Xposure is about rock climbing dance theatre. It is also a ritual. For millenia, man observed the movements of the celestial spheres. The great astronomical events, the equinox, solar and lunar eclipses, inspired both celebration and terror. These events became signs, bits of news from the realm of the truly Other. The Solar eclipse is a phenomenal expression of a three body problem. Earth, moon, and sun are three bodies continually falling towards each other.The trajectories of these celestial motions form complex elliptical orbits. We are falling towards the sun and the moon is falling towards the earth. At high tide even the earth’s oceans begin to fall towards the moon. Gravity is the ‘force/field’ that human bodies experience falling towards the earth. Gravity, a universal constant, also creates the conditions of the earth’s falling towards the sun. Falling a distance of one inch on earth partakes of the same gravitational mystery as the moon in its falling towards the earth. HIgH Xposure then, is about two bodies falling together, one very much smaller than the other, and only one a conscious body. HIgH Xposure is a ritual celebration of the great and small events of gravity. Its co-incidence with the rare full eclipse of the sun in Toronto inMay1994 compells us to simply stand back and say -YES.
HIgH Xposure - putting exhiliration back into art.
CAMPUSPANICJuly1997
In Tensions TENSEGRITY ON SPADINA - March 1998
LIVESTOCK - Music Dance Festival, 1996
HIgH Xposure and the Total Eclipse of the Sun MAY 1994
HIgH Xposure is about rock climbing dance theatre. It is also a ritual.
For millenia, man observed the movements of the celestial spheres. The great astronomical events, the equinox, solar and lunar eclipses, inspired both celebration and terror. These events became signs, bits of news from the realm of the truly Other.
The Solar eclipse is a phenomenal expression of a three body problem. Earth, moon, and sun are three bodies continually falling towards each other.The trajectories of these celestial motions form complex elliptical orbits. We are falling towards the sun and the moon is falling towards the earth. At high tide even the earth’s oceans begin to fall towards the moon. Gravity is the ‘force/field’ that human bodies experience falling towards the earth. Gravity, a universal constant, also creates the conditions of the earth’s falling towards the sun. Falling a distance of one inch on earth partakes of the same gravitational mystery as the moon in its falling towards the earth.
HIgH Xposure then, is about two bodies falling together, one very much smaller than the other, and only one a conscious body.
HIgH Xposure is a ritual celebration of the great and small events of gravity. Its co-incidence with the rare full eclipse of the sun in Toronto inMay1994 compells us to simply stand back and say -YES.
HISTORY Toronto, Ontario, May 1994 - HIgH Xposure is a new and unique spectacle; anoriginal synthesis of the athleticism and danger of rock climbing, the movement and music of dance and the emotion and immediacy of theatre.
Co-directed by Aina Tilups and Peter Penev, with choreography by Pam Johnson, HIgH Xposure introduces a company of sixteen rock climbers and dancers with a show that celebrates the beauty of the emerging sport of rock climbing and explores the themes of birth, evolution, and transformation.
The audience is transformed as well. Like the performers, they remain verticle. Following the promptings of one of our characters, the spirit of gravity Itself, the audience walks through a labyrinth of sixteen provocative pieces.
Stills from the May 1994 emergence Flying Flesh, Falling Flesh
Solo Swing
Spandex Space
Paradoxical Space of Escher - QTime movie
Vertical Acrobatics
Special thanks to Adam Grant, Quinton Bennett and Merrilin Poersch for having gone to places most of us only dream about
Thanks to Bob Bergman and Sharon McCrindle-Bergman and all the staff at Joe Rockheads for their support and patience.