Ray is a series of performed sculptures, formed by bodies and mirrors, working with sunlight and shadow. Using mirrors, four performers – Yuni Chung, Gabriella Hirst, Yeni Ma and Marleen Boschen – redirect the summer solstice sunlight from the highest point of the Villa Romana (artist residency) down two floors into the shadowed garden courtyard, as a theatrical manual sun-spotlight. The borrowed rays are passed between the performers, visibility flickering and faltering with the coming and going of clouds and the wind. A choreography between sun, glass, body and the garden foliage is formed as the performers try to capture the sun, hold it steady, and pass it onwards.

 

Ray references and reinterprets the sunlight phenomenon produced by gnomon: time and space-measuring sundial-like instruments that were built into the architecture of some Florentine Churches and Basilicas during the 14th -16th centuries, some which continue to 'work'. The performance reinterprets these mechanisms of sunlight control into a choreography for 40 minutes on the evening of the 2024 summer solstice.

Documentation: Luca Sorgato