Myriam Gourfink

Choreography: Myriam Gourfink
Dance: Amandine Bajou, Karima El Amrani, Myriam Gourfink, Suzanne Henry, Deborah Lary, Annabelle Rosenow, Véronique Weil
Composition and live electronic performance: Kasper T. Toeplitz
Sound desk and sound engineering: Zakariyya Cammoun

Guided in her practice by the breath and yoga breathing techniques, choreographer Myriam Gourfink adapts her piece Breath Structure to an in-situ performance, featuring seven dancers and a composer, within the spaces of the exhibition Breath of an Architect by Bijoy Jain / Studio Mumbai. The captivated public can move freely from one room to another, attentively listening to the various breathing rhythms.

Breath Structure is a situated piece, which adapts the vocabulary of popular dances through the art of breathing, slowness, the analysis of movement, and Labanotation. Against the backdrop of the exhibition, quartet, duo, and solo figures are born, which make the body’s primary movement—breathing—both visible and tactile. An extension of their breath, the weightless dancers form elastic structures that contract, expand, diverge, and invite visitors to circulate freely around them, in tune with their changing poses and the incessantly evolving soundscapes created by composer Kasper T. Toeplitz.

Biographies

Since 1996, choreographer Myriam Gourfink has explored the measurement of time of the danced gesture through the breath and sensoriality, influenced by her practice of yoga. She seeks to create resonant spaces that absorb the spectators’ attention and challenge perception, particularly temporal. The experience of pulmonary elasticity led her to study Labanotation or kinetography to help her write dance scores and develop flexible and open choreographic systems which, while leaving an element of choice to the performers, also provide them with information regarding the sensitive aims of the entire project.

The composer and musician (computer, electric bass) Kasper Toeplitz has developed his work in the “no man’s land” that exists between “academic” composition and new electronic music or “noise music”. He works both with major state institutions (GMEM, GRM, IRCAM, Radio-France), ensembles, and orchestras, as well as with experimental or unclassifiable musicians like Éliane Radigue, Zbigniew Karkowski, Dror Feiler, Phill Niblock, Zeitkratzer, Z'ev, or Vomir, amongst others. He frequently works in the field of contemporary dance and since 2019, has been an associated composer at Art Zoyd Studios.