Rammed Earth

Tere O’Connor looks to concepts of adaptability in contemporary architecture as source for the intimate and shifting environment of Rammed Earth. Audience members are incorporated into the expanding, contracting, liquid space of this site-adaptive dance work, as they are moved into different places within the space throughout the performance. The dance unfolds around them in layers of meaning, gesture, energy and emotion.

In all of O’Connor’s works, he aims to connect the rational and the unconscious mind, so that shifting perceptions create a web of personal and historical impulses. This work was sparked by his interest in sentient architecture, in which structures form in response to temperature, climate or human interactivity. Though the title of the work refers to a building technique, it has a metaphorical resonance. In Rammed Earth there is the suggestion of force, of an environment under siege.

O’Connor’s boldly individualist approach to choreography has contributed new thought to the form and resonates throughout its theoretical discourse. He is presently engaged in a deliberate detachment from narrative with a desire to shed light on dance as a sub-linguistic area of expression. O’Connor’s astounding performers and renowned collaborators constitute a family of artists, together for over 20 years, who are dedicated to expanding the potency of dance as a serious art form for our time.