Studies on Infinity #3 – Caravaggio by Isabelle Schad was performed 27–28 June at Wiesenburg Sommerfest.ival 2025. Inspired by the Baroque painter’s intense naturalism, it blends collective body awareness in cycles of drama without climax or resolution.
Sombre and unemotional, Studies on Infinity #3 – Caravaggio references the embodied vulnerability of bodies in motion in paintings like The Calling of Saint Matthew (1599–1600), translating expressive bodily language and dramatic chiaroscuro into a cycle of relationality, emergence, and grounding. It expands Isabelle Schad’s long-term, in-depth research-practice of somatic and sensorial group choreography without narrative arc or personas.
The long, slim room of Tanzhalle Wiesenburg is laid with large, thin mats, demarcating three stages—near, midrange, and far—that shape my triadic perspective down its barrel. Eight dancers inhabit the space, some dressed in loose, dark clothing, others topless, pantless, or fully naked. Some lean against the walls, or curl on the mats like mounds of earth. Their limbs unravel, exposed by skin and cloth, their arms forming loose rings as their hands hold their elbows. These unfurling members are invitations, taken by other bodies that approach the grounded forms and gently use their hands to stretch the shoulders and rib cages away from the opposing torque of the pelvises. Those lying on the mats are like dough being firmly kneaded; those handling them emphasise the figure-eight spiral of movement through their bodies. Limbs are extended as the body’s fabric stretches further, sometimes elevating someone completely off the mat.
©Dieter Hartwig
The dancers fold in and out of the roles of stretched, stretcher, observer: doing and being done to, seeing and choosing the parts they play, pulling, folding, resisting and yielding. Landscapes gradually dissolve into one another, as the bodies of skin and fabric curl and settle into stillness. The motion from the pulling bodies lingers in the space. I observe these separate, ancient formations as though they are underwater, with currents pushing forces above and around them.
Each in their own time, they sit up and use their hands to cover one another’s faces, and sing long, exhaling notes into fingers, exchanging shape and sound, melting into and out of one another. Their ascension into verticality continues as they stand up and perform bouncing, lunging gestures in duets. Face to face in a gentle, playful fight, recalling the grace of martial arts and fencing, they keep their hands clasped, and the figure-eights formed by their arms spring and rebound like slinkies. Scenes dissipate and develop, as now the dancers begin, without unison, to run in curves, flowing through the long hall. They find spaces to ground their feet and throw their elbows and hands into fast, windmill-like actions, blurring swirls around their heads and circulating power that I feel reaching my cheeks as gusts of air. The wind peters out, and they embrace and carry each other’s slumping bodies to lay them down on the mats, near, midway, and far; resting fragments of debris. They begin to remove and replace articles of clothing, using their hands to press, stretch, and lift one another again. The choreographic sequence of melding and separating landscapes loops without resolution, creating a breathing painting over two hours.
Studies on Infinity #3 – Caravaggio by Isabelle Schad was performed 27–28 June at Wiesenburg Sommerfest.ival 2025 at Tanzhalle Wiesenburg.
