Material

Material is a dance work about the anxious mind and the inadequacy of reason.

Conceived by Michael Benedicto, the piece emerged from a set of cosmic and physical references: acoustic levitation, planetary time, and gravitational pull. These ideas became the hidden mechanics of the work: matter suspended by sound, bodies drawn into orbit, time distorted by distance, and movement held in instability. The scientific references function less as explanation than as conditions: forces, pressures, and distortions that shape the body and its movement.

The work also draws from Benedicto’s interest in the stark, artificial physicality of Noa Zuk’s Boxerman and A Droom Come Tree, particularly the performances of Caroline Boussard, Rachael Osborne, and Leo Lerus. Their influence appears as a movement sensibility: precise, eccentric, slightly mechanized, and alert to forces outside the body.

Choreographed by Madge Reyes and performed by Lex Paquiabas and Lili Andres, Material unfolds through two figures held within a charged, unstable space. Their movement suggests bodies under experiment: suspended, externally animated, pulled by unseen forces, like marionettes or mannequins. They become agents of attraction and refusal, drawn toward each other while kept at a fixed distance. The choreography translates orbital mechanics into a portrait of fixation, doubt, and the mind’s struggle to give form to uncertainty.

Benedicto’s score unfolds across four sections and runs over twenty minutes. Built from synthesizers, samples, dark timbres, shifting grooves, and fragments of astronomical sonification, the music draws partly from NASA’s Sinister Sounds of the Solar System, where data from magnetic waves and astronomical signals are translated into sound. Within the piece, these sonic elements become a kind of invisible architecture: not outer space as spectacle, but as pressure, vibration, signal, and dread.

Presented by 1F Projects at La Fuerza Plaza on 30 September 2023, with a second performance on 13 October 2023 in association with Fifth Wall, Material exists between dance, sound, and installation: a study of bodies under force, and of thought dissolving into the immaterial.