The oratory of the laboratory: Listening and voicing in the dance studio

When a voice guides a movement, whether through incantations, instructions, performative scores or hypnotic suggestions, it takes on the quality of song – revealing a kind of natural order. This intensification, this expansion of the present through a shared attention that transforms the quality of gestures and words, is not a deliberate ritual pantomime. It is the consequence of a total disposition to listening. Through the motif of the oratory , I want to designate two things: a prayerful attitude that formulates a call or desire to connect with the world, and a vocal intensity that stretches into song, triggering dance, both resulting from a procreative movement of our consciousness under the effect of a mnemic trance. Such a prayer is quite different from addressing a deity in the context of worship. And yet, as a technique, a mnemonic device, it encapsulates a disposition necessary for all artistic transmission. Indeed, what is a prayer if not the congruence of a physical attitude and a mental intention, often symbolized by the joining of hands? What is a prayer if not a call for a response in the form of an actual change, both in the world and within ourselves? What is a prayer if not an address to an otherness that calls upon a totality as witness? And when it is articulated, what is a prayer if not the simple intensification of words, brought to the threshold of song by a dynamic sincerity?