Flat

Tethered: This vertical performance program featured two residencies and work-in-progress performances that navigated vertical space through aerial performance.

Flat is a dance-theater work based on a Borges short story and designed to be performed outdoors on the side of an apartment building, four stories up. Flat combines storytelling, video projection, and aerial performance. The performance at EMPAC simulated this site-specific version, with the audience lying on the floor looking up at an apartment in an aerial view, like an architect’s sketch, with some real objects, some drawn, and others projected. A man wakes up in his apartment feeling strange, not knowing he is upside down. The audience hears his inner monologue via headphones as he discovers his new reality: he must either learn how to live anew or change the world back to a familiar state. Flat immerses both the performer and the audience in an intimate situation, shifting our perspective on what constitutes reality.

Pardo’s work combines dance, video, and mixed media into site-specific projects in urban spaces. Originally from Argentina, Pardo is currently based in Brussels.