‘Gnosis’ is the Greek word for knowledge. It indicates a direct spiritual experiential knowledge and intuitive knowledge, mystic rather than that from rational or reasoned thinking.

Over recent years the fascination for the ritualistic phenomena and particularly the trance, has strongly influenced the choreographic research of Vincenzo Carta.
The body is the first vehicle for knowledge, through experience and perception, it creates a map of reality that allows us to understand the world around us, both in a material and an immaterial way.
Dance is for me a key to explore the essence of the human experience.

In this new work the dance takes its place as expression of the indissolubility and wholeness of the being. The bodies of the four dancers behave as parts of one entity, they are the organs of a collective body. The movement, in constant becoming, is spatially conceived with the purpose to produce a kaleidoscopic vision of the choreography.
The physical actions, beside giving life to the choreographic composition, have the goal to drive the dancers through several conscience states.
During the performance, on the scalp of every dancer, 14 electrodes will be placed to measure the local cerebral activity. The four streams of signals conveying into the hardware/software developed by Ongakuaw will recreate one virtual entity that reassumes a wide psychic state distributed among the four dancers. We call it collective brain.
The collective brain controls the generation of sound and the flow of light. In return it influences through a process of feedback the choreographic composition and the state of trance of the dancers. The emotions govern sound and light, but sound and light also feed back onto emotions.
The spectator is immerse into the universe created by the dancers, populated by the sounds of their emotions and where the only spatial reference is the relation between them.

concept: Vincenzo Carta and Ongakuaw
choreography: Vincenzo Carta
biotic soundscape Ongakuaw
dance: Vincenzo Carta, Piet Defrancq, Steven Michel, Stéve Paulet
costumes: Jean Paul Lespagnard
lighting design: Hans Maier
administration: Caravan Productions
production: WE GO vzw
coproduction: CDTM Circuito danza campana, Naples; Fondazione Fabbrica Europa, Florence; Stuk Kunstencentrum, Leuven; Kunstencentrum nOna, Mechelen; Pianofabriek, Brussels; Sosta Palmizi, Cortona
with the support of Vlaamse Ghemeenschap

The show is realised in the framework of the project “Focus on Art and Science in the Performing Arts” with the support of Culture Programme of the European Union.

Gnosis #1 is part of the events of Festival d’Europa.