Tonic (2008)

Two people meet. They actually didn’t want to talk about their problems or at least they thought they didn’t but they end up staging and restaging their complaints, demanding some time to really search for a decent and definitive cure. They begin executing prescribed treatments to act as antibodies against obscure and mysterious pathologies.

The movement patterns and structures become something like recipes for the improvement of the (in) human condition.
Through the observation of each other’s progress they hope to find recognizable signs of recovery. Their method to unravel and make sense of the healing process is unruly. They encounter terrible side effects that create diversions that in turn also ask to be treated. They are confronted with the dubious placebo effect and ultimately, though they won’t stop moving, failure’s urgency. It is as much about formulating the sickness as finding a movement prescription to transform and remedy it. In an age of anxiety will something as simple as exposure to plain and bright colours provide some ease to our pain?

«Tonic» tries to imagine and test “choreographic treatments” for specific symptoms. It aims to open up a field of play whereby all known, yet to be discovered or completely fictionalized methods for a ‘healing path’ are on offer and made available for integration and adaptation.