Discovering body, music, and soul with Vibrátil
If you were wondering how a performance collective puts down their ideas, and create through their body, music, and soul; here you can find it!
Interview : Francisca Ceballos
Photography: Vibrátil Archive
This interview comes along with a playlist, you can find it here
Why do you try to understand the body deeply?
The body for me is the quintessential universal container. Everything is experienced, assimilated, internalized and expressed through the body.
I firmly believe that the body is capable of producing one of the purest forms of language; for that reason, is the most powerful vehicle to communicate and transform. The infinity of its possibilities has always amazed me and has become my life main interest. Being able to explore and express myself through it has led me to understand the world and the people around me in a deeper way. An understatement that I feel is necessary in our times where we are becoming more and more detached from what makes us human.
When you start a project, how do you decide the best medium to realize it? (Image, video, live performance)
Many factors influence how a project is conceived and executed. Normally, the first thing I consider is the main objective of it, what kind of message do I want to convey and which resources are the most appropriate for that message to be transmitted in the best way.
The artists involved are another factor to consider, and the intentionality or the value that they will bring to the piece.
Vibrátil as a whole is intended to be a strong multidisciplinary and multiplatform based collective, so these two concepts are always present in the creative process.
What is your main inspiration?
I am inspired by dance (or the general idea of movement) as a vessel for story-telling and a communication channel.
A typical narrative (usually verbal) is something that expresses, connects, and transforms. This is something I’ve always wanted to be able to achieve physically too. It’s not easy to convey a powerful message, to tell a good story, and it’s even harder to do so without verbal language. This sort of improbable feat is really attractive to me.
Dance, being able to make someone cry, laugh, feel, understand, move, and think without having to speak; is one of the many reasons why I do it. There is this palpable level of heightened existence when someone is speaking through movement and I find myself very inspired by that place.
Do you use music as a form of inspiration for your artistic creation?
Yes, I do. Music is for me another deeply physical communication tool. It necessarily passes through the body, it is activated through it and for that reason, it is intrinsically related to the way dance operates as a human code.
Music does have the power to evoke deep primal feelings at the core of the shared human experience; just like dancing. And it not only crosses cultures but also, reaches deep into our evolutionary past and in that sense, it is truly a universal language that allows us to convey that powerful message that needs to be heard and felt.
What is the process behind choosing the music that will be part of the projects?
I am looking for new music fifty percent of the time. No joke. Music has this magical power to regulate my emotions, something I find kind of difficult to do on my own and at the very beginning of a new project. Music is exactly what I need: A magical tool to help me shape whatever idea is popping in my head or running through my body.
Music can be so many things. I do not only look for “musical compositions”, but also for single sounds, noises, voices. It doesn’t have to be entirely melodic or rhythmic or make any sense at all. On the contrary, if it makes me work harder, it means I’m looking at the right place.
I usually start by making research, after I have a decent amount of material I start to think if I want to use it raw (as I found it), or if I prefer to have someone else to reinterpret it and give it a new or more complex shape. Music or sound is always present at the core of my creative process, but this doesn’t mean that I use music or sounds for all of my projects, sometimes the body acts as the only sonic presence of the work, can be equally or even more interesting.
Do you think that music and body are directly related?
Yes, I do. As I mentioned before, both, music and body are undeniably related in my opinion. They share this physical bond that makes them almost inseparable from one another no matter in which way we are conceiving “music” or “body”.
Which are those recurrent topics that you want to speak about?
More than a specific sort of topics, the work of Vibrátil is intended to be around the body and the idea of the movement itself so the possibilities are endless. Some projects can move around an aesthetic question, others can be profoundly philosophical, and others are intended to be socially or politically oriented.
How do you traduce it (those messages) into body expression?
Once we have an idea of where we want the project to be headed we proceed to translate that particular intention to the body. Does it have to be more choreographic? Does it need to be more performative? Is it going to be a live-action, or a photograph, or a video piece? All these questions are present along the entire creative process and allow me to think on which way is it possible for me to materialize the specific intention behind each piece.
Which elements distinguish body language from other languages?
Body language is direct, it is transmitted and received through each one of our senses, which makes it infinitely powerful and complex. Some communications can only reach us through our visual capabilities, others through the sound, but those that we can perceive with the totality of our body are the ones that have the greatest impact.
Languages may vary, our cultural codes may be diametrically different from country to country, but the way we connect through our bodies is universal and inherent to all human beings. It is for this reason that art in general must recognize the potential of a multisensory approach, the importance of the body as a receptacle and the need for a communication system suitable for all types of bodies and abilities.
What do you want to make feel to the spectators when they see your work?
I want to think of my work as an invitation for everyone to connect with their corporality in the way they can. An invitation to dance in every way and every place possible and above all, an invitation to feel alive.
