Being Together without any Voice
By Daniel Linehan
Performance by Michael Helland, Steven Michel, Anne Pajunen, and Anna Whaley
Produced by Caravan Production

Reconnaissance Concours at Château Rouge, November 25, 2011 (Annemasse)
Temps d’Aimer with Malandain Ballet, September 9, 2012 (Biarritz)
L’Échangeur Festival C’est comme ça, Fère en Tardenois, October 17, 2012 (Château-Thierry)
Le Toboggan with Maison de la Danse Lyon, October 19, 2012 (Décines)
CDC Danse à Lille, January 18, 2013 (Roubaix)
Centre Culturel André Malraux, January 22, 2013 (Vandoeuvre les Nancy)
Le Dôme Théâtre, January 25, 2013 (Albertville)
L’Hexagone, January 29, 2013 (Meylan)
Balleto Teatro di Torino, January 31, 2013 (Turin)
Onyx-La Carrière, February 19, 2013 (Saint-Herblain)
Théâtre des Abbesses, November 5-9, 2013 (Paris)
CNDC Angers, February 11, 2014 (Angers)

Awarded first prize for the Reconnaissance Concours 2011

In Being Together without any Voice, the silent interactions of the performers do not resemble the standard grammatical formats of statements, questions, and commands. If they were to speak, they would use “or-phrases,” phrases that express possibility without asserting anything definite. But the performers do not speak, and they use their voices only when they are alone. The absence of the voice is clearly not meant to bring about a “pure” state before language or beyond language. It is simply a restriction that is meant to reveal different possible ways of being together, ways that are sometimes unfamiliar and sometimes uncannily familiar. What happens when we consider the other person as an object, or the other as ourselves? What happens when we consider ourselves as an object? Or ourselves as an other?

“…social or habitual, pattern or expression, image or rhythm, detached or within, unified or multiple, random or determined, labor or game, one or both…”