ORBIT

Concept, research and performance

Naree Vachananda

Dramaturgical consultation

Philipa Rothfield

Lighting experiments and operation

Shane Grant

Sound

Naree, Kim Cascone, Richard Chartier and Taylor Deupree

Reflector construction and Front of House

Matt Crosby

The premiere season of Orbit at the Mechanic Institute, 

February 2014 can be viewed here.

Orbit​ was premiered at the Mechanic Institute - Studio as part of Metanoia Theatre Launch Festival, February 2014. The full-length version can be viewed here, duration approx 39 minutes.​​​

Orbit is a meditation on the eye, the pathway of the Earth traveling around the Sun and the co-dependence of the sunlight, our eyes and how we see. In each session of the creative development of this work, I started warming up with a form of moving meditation: a Noh practice, a Pilates session, a ballet class on my own, then a long, sustained improvisation or two.

My initial idea is to explore how I can use a form of moving meditation such as Noh training to create a performance work. I use my fascination about the eye as a platform for this exploration. In a way the whole creative process of Orbit is a long series of meditation. I meditate on the imageries of eye socket (the orbit), brain and seeing: see 'On meditation and improvisation' and 'Body as a seeing eye' in the pondering section. For Orbit, the photoreceptor cells, then each and every part of the body, are the sites of enquiries on seeing and imprinting of evolution.

Then I find the Sun. The sunlight comes in from one of the narrow windows at Theatre Space at Building N, Victoria University Footscray Nicholson Campus. The window emphasises the movement of the Earth orbiting the Sun during each period of my rehearsal session. What could be better to illuminate the piece called Orbit than the sunlight?

After series of experiments on materials to use as a reflective surface to bring the sunlight into the Theatre, I decide on the back sides of CDs and DVDs which give the most interesting effect of the reflected and refracted light from the Sun (see the footage above). They even give a glow of rainbows if reflecting direct sunlight. On a cloudy day, it gives a different mood. No dazzling rainbow glow but a subtle reflected light to dark areas in the space.  

To estimate the position of the reflector panels, I recorded the position of sunlight every Friday when direct sunlight hit the floor at 2.30 pm. See the drawings of the positions of the sunlight in the record of time in the pondering section.

The Sun has an inseparable relationship with the human eye, in fact any animal eye. Through the process of the natural selection, the eye has developed because of the advantage of seeing - the sunlight enable the eye to see. Without the Sun, there’s no eye. Animals that live where there’s no sunlight, such as the bottom of the oceans, use sound (audible or inaudible to our ears) to navigate their world. We humans has made connection of the Sun to our eye since antiquity. 

In a way, the development of ​​​Orbit is practical and intuitive at the same time. I am interested in allowing and observing how things unfold, then gathering the elements of the work which, in turn, over a period of time, effects my perception of how I source movement from each and every part of my body. It reminds me of Darwinian’s theory of evolution through natural selections itself. A passage which I include in the work explains succinctly how the eye, seeing and how we evolve.