Oracle
© Rasa Alksnyte

PROJECT

Oracle

Oracle is a collective practice developed by Caroline Daish (BE/AU), Justine Maxelon (BE/DE) and Michel Yang (BE/US) in 2015. In the past three years Oracle presented in diverse contexts and appeared spontaneously in public spaces.

Oracle is an eyes-closed body-voice improvisation practice reading diverse spaces; train stations, parks, institutions, forests, public libraries, urban gardens and private living spaces. It interacts with these surroundings through instant sound and movement composition and expands the boundaries between individual emotional expressions and shared public space. Each practice session is unique to the moment and context.
The name, Oracle, suggests agency, ambiguity, obscurity, divinity, communication, medium, utterance, wisdom. We chose the name oracle as it encompasses the expansive notion of voice and ineffability.

The group choreography is created by an auditory perception rather than a visual logic and highlights the idiosyncratic nature of listening. Listening asks that we understand, question and transform our emotional and cultural connections to oneself, to each other and to the environment.

Accompanying the Oracle practice is a live-scoring practice, a notation that translates the experience of the ephemeral performance into diverse visual mediums. Oracle offers several stages of participation – as a performer, spectator, receiver, live-scorer or casual passer-by.

Caroline Daish

Caroline Daish arrived in Brussels in 2000 and has worked as performer, collaborator and advisor in performance, dance, sound pieces and film productions. She is a book for Mette Edvardsen’s living book project Time has fallen asleep in the afternoon sunshine and performer in What Nature Says and member of the you you you choir by Myriam Van Imschoot. In 2018 she will perform in the production “Safe” by Julia Pfleiderer in collaboration with ICTUS.

Justine Maxelon

BE, DE
Justine Maxelon is a Brussels based dancer and performer, graduated from IWANSON – international school for contemporary dance (Munich) in 2009. Justine has worked as dancer, performer, and/or collaborator for a variety of artists, choreographers, and directors. Some include Daniel Linehan, Benjamin Vandewalle, Julia Bardsley, Nature Theatre of Oklahoma, ... Justine’s dramaturgical coaching include idioter by Alma Söderberg and Hendrik Willekens, nadita by Alma Söderberg.

Michel Yang

Michel Yang is an American born, Brussels-based performance artist. Michel’s primary medium is the body, however, video and photography have recently begun to enter her work as extensions of her body practice. Presently Yang is following an audio-visual post-graduate with Sound Image Culture. She received a Master of Fine Arts in Dance at New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts and has followed post-graduate studies with a.pass and Sound Image Culture. As a performer she has worked with Lilia Mestre, Stefan Dreher, Pierre Droulers, Mia Lawrence, and Walter Verdin to name a few. As a teacher Michel’s subjects are contemporary dance, improvisation, and forms of materialization.