Rewind and Remix

Riff is a fantastic example of how dance can be inspired by other arts. Matthias Sperling has taken three sequences from other choreographers and, to a score by cerebral electronic musician Scanner, has applied the ethos of remixing, splicing and reconnecting the originals in a style that mirrors both hip-hop turntablism and William Burrough’s literary cut-ups.

Sperling identifies that the origin of Riff came hand-in-hand with his own interest in other art forms: “Riff started with a curiosity about how the pervasive contemporary practice of sampling, particularly in music and visual art, might work in dance and why we haven’t encountered more of it in dance already.” Furthermore, it represents a change in his life. “It also started as an idea for designing an activity that would allow me to make a transition from being a dancer to being a choreographer, by being both at the same time.”

The three works that Sperling has chosen - William Forsythe’s 'Solo', Shobana Jeyasingh’s 'Transtep' and Laila Diallo’s 'Out of Sight in the Direction of my Body' - cover a broad selection of bracing contemporary performance. Forsythe is an artist that Sperling holds in great respect. “He is very likely the most important living dance artist, still radically expanding and refreshing the field, or at least certainly one of a very few exceptional innovators.” And since Riff is being performed as part of a double bill with Diallo’s The Wayside, it will be interesting to see how Sperling adapts the source material.

“I was especially interested in designing an activity that, by its very nature, would allow some beginnings of an individual choreographic voice to become visible through the knowable difference between the sampled material and my handling of that material.” This very post-modern take on originality, and  way of struggling with the increasing pull of tradition in an art-form that is supposedly free of preconceptions, marks Sperling as a choreographer who is discovering his style through reference and miscegenation.

Since his influences come from beyond dance - he includes “the late, very great, Pina Bausch and Merce Cunningham, to John Cage, Karlheinz Stockhausen, author Jorge Luis Borges and (aesthetic scamp) Marcel Duchamp” in his enthusiasms - it is not surprising that he has looked to broader culture for his approach. Yet, this is still a piece for dance enthusiasts, as it so directly discusses the cross-pollination between choreographers.

Sperling is an energetic collaborator - other projects include dancing in an art gallery and teaming up with African musicians and scientists from Bucharest. In Riff, however, he establishes his uniqueness through careful sampling and his own dynamic physical presence.