[attach id=297747 size="medium"]In S-S-Space, the areas we interact in and the way they affect our perceptions are explored through dance.[/attach]

In his book Species of Spaces (Espèces d’espaces), French writer George Perec explored the spaces he dealt with daily – be it the empty page of a book or the bedroom – and transformed the ordinary into something different.

Dancers and choreographers Rebecca Camilleri and Nicola Rayworth became aware of space when the two former classmates were separated by land and sea for years. Although they kept in touch online, “we were really aware of this isolation which we were experiencing, and this barrier we had of space,” Camilleri says.

There is a special kind of alchemy in being in a shared space that creative people – be they writers, musicians or choreographers – have noticed and written about, and this duo was no exception.

“We really felt we needed to be physically in the same space to work on this. The book speaks about being in different spaces and having these boundaries, and we thought we’d go there.

“As humans we get bored easily, we’re all the time seeking to find new spaces. And what Perec did was write about ordinary spaces which we inhabit every day. But he recreated these spaces through his imagination, and that is what I took on from this book,” Camilleri says.

With the two dancers (both alumni of the Dartington College of Arts) back in the same place, they set about translating their English translation of Perec’s work into choreography. The two would read a selected part of text separately, and then create a choreography – a set of instructions inspired from what they had read – for the other dancer to perform.

“We saw each other’s movement material, we liked movements, we would keep them, we’d throw others away, we’d keep them as separate solos or we’d try to join them together,” Rayworth says.

The instructions, being largely dependent on the dancer’s interpretation of them, lent themselves to a wide range of personal interpretation, as the two found out when they gave the instructions they had been working on to a group of students from the University of Malta’s School of Performing Arts.

“The tasks are more open to interpret… for example you have to find a memory, a personal memory you have in this space, and you have to create movement material from that memory,” Camilleri says.

Following the process from an early stage was Adrian Abela, an architect and artist who is collaborating with Rubberbodies for the first time.

“I had a technical background of how to deal with space. That’s what was interesting about the book: this guy had a totally different way of how to describe a space or design a house. Like he’d describe the movements in a house according to the activities not according to the rooms, or that there should be rooms that are not a kitchen, where you cook, but a room which you go into on a Wednesday, for instance. And as an architect, you don’t think about these things,” Abela says.

“They transformed the words into dance. What I tried to do was use my background of architecture to use the same technique and language we use in technical drawing, to do a non-technical drawing. I didn’t literally draw what he said; I used our interpretation of it.”

Abela’s involvement as an architect also entailed designing the stage for the performance, which exists in four dimensions, if you will – the actual space Camilleri and Rayworth will be performing in at the MITP in Valletta, and online, where the group has been posting drawings by Abela specifically made for the performance, which were inspired by the same parts of the texts that the performance will be about.

“You will actually experience the stage like never before. We want people to experience the space of the stage itself.

Although the Rubberbodies Collective has always had a strong research element to it – a lot of which was made public online or in print – this is a step ahead in terms of audience engagement: “This is more instructive, we’re actually telling them to do A, B, C. Then it’s up to the individual to take that further,” Camilleri says.

Ultimately, the topic of space is an indirect exploration of what it means to be human.

S-S-Spaces is being held at the MITP theatre, Valletta, on Friday and Saturday. Performances start at 8pm. Tickets are available at the door.