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| social choreography, chalk on grass, Queens Museum, NYC, 2018 |
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| park visitors walking the score made from chalk |
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| booklet in the S.T.E.P. exhibition |
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| click to view or download booklet |
figures of walking together
for Queens Museum, New York City, 2018
and Oscillation Festival/Q-O2, Brussels, 2022
social choreographies,
informed by drill and dance movement,
in up to 3 tracks for any number of people
figures of walking together is made from elements of a larger scale walking score Be there, Do this (link to project at Martin-Gropius-Bau, Berlin, 2016).
Variations of the figures are occasionally marked with athletic field marker chalk onto the grass fields in front of Queens Museum and throughout Flushing Meadows Corona Park in NY.
The walking choreography invites visitors to the museum as well as the park to self-perform the figures of walking together by walking the chalked tracks on the ground drawings. Without further instructions necessary the audience naturally embodies the proposed figures, either in groups, pairs or individually by playing and walking around in the chalked tracks.
The figures and patterns found in figures of walking together are inspired by concepts of how to organize walking (or moving) in groups, institutionally or intuitively. Where some parts are for example, quoting simple encounters between bodies in public situations, other parts lean toward sport, military and border protection choreographies - the dance of bodies on side paths meet against the drill of controlled bodies.
In the end, the strictly determined drawings of one to three tracks in figures of walking together, are only guidelines and thus more of a suggestion of a closed system. It is the individual and collective behavior by the self-performing audience that shines a light of empowerment within a given structure.
social choreographies,
informed by drill and dance movement,
in up to 3 tracks for any number of people
figures of walking together is made from elements of a larger scale walking score Be there, Do this (link to project at Martin-Gropius-Bau, Berlin, 2016).
Variations of the figures are occasionally marked with athletic field marker chalk onto the grass fields in front of Queens Museum and throughout Flushing Meadows Corona Park in NY.
The walking choreography invites visitors to the museum as well as the park to self-perform the figures of walking together by walking the chalked tracks on the ground drawings. Without further instructions necessary the audience naturally embodies the proposed figures, either in groups, pairs or individually by playing and walking around in the chalked tracks.
The figures and patterns found in figures of walking together are inspired by concepts of how to organize walking (or moving) in groups, institutionally or intuitively. Where some parts are for example, quoting simple encounters between bodies in public situations, other parts lean toward sport, military and border protection choreographies - the dance of bodies on side paths meet against the drill of controlled bodies.
In the end, the strictly determined drawings of one to three tracks in figures of walking together, are only guidelines and thus more of a suggestion of a closed system. It is the individual and collective behavior by the self-performing audience that shines a light of empowerment within a given structure.
“Sharing a space always means acting with each other in a choreographic way. But, How do rules emerge? What is the relationship be-
tween playing and discipline? And to what extent do spaces predetermine our actions? Helbich renders explicit what usually stays hidden.”
(catalogue Berliner Festspiele, 2016)
figures of walking together booklet and the variations of drawings on the grass in front of Queens Museum were made for the exhibition “Saunter Trek Escort Parade... (S.T.E.P.)”, curated by Christina Freeman, Emireth Herrera and moira williams in October 2018 at the Queens Museum, New York in collaboration with Flux Factory, NYC.
Other versions of the same concept where worked out for
figures of walking together booklet and the variations of drawings on the grass in front of Queens Museum were made for the exhibition “Saunter Trek Escort Parade... (S.T.E.P.)”, curated by Christina Freeman, Emireth Herrera and moira williams in October 2018 at the Queens Museum, New York in collaboration with Flux Factory, NYC.
Other versions of the same concept where worked out for
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| starting point of the score |
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| figure 7 from the score book: "Three people start walking at the same time, next to each other. They walk into an open turn and thus into an open encounter." |
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| Overview of the score drawing. The long grass makes it difficult to see from far. |
