DICTUM

DJALMA is a Javanese word for metamorphosis. Applied to the transmigration of souls, it signifies transformation towards the human. When applied to chemical processes, it means fermentation.
A crossing of metaphysical and mundane meaning.

Djalma Primordial Science (founded in 1998) is one of the few projects in the world that consistently unites the disciplines of experimental dance-theater and live electro-acoustic music. Through the practice of improvisation we seek a restoration of the primordial physical body and exploration of its limits, a transmutation of the elements through unstable sound and volatile movement, a precarious position, an awkwardly silent situation. We reject the notion of “performance” in favor of “encounter.” Our work is an unmasking of actor and audience alike.

Our process involves the materiality of sound as onomatopoeia: wherein sounds evoke states of physical transformation (decay, agitation, coagulation, immersion). The dancer’s bones reluctantly wring themselves out leaving a trail of moisture on the brow, her limbs become delicate tissue paper catching fire, her form evaporates and condenses again. Like the origin of all sound in movement: the dance is not only seen but felt, transmitted directly from the body of the mover into the body of the viewer in this last and first frontier of connective tissue.

Our research is a discipline of madness for human evolution, permitting one to climb over the walls that society has constructed around the body.---Ephia

Jeff Gburek correlates his work with reconfigured guitars, field recordings and altered electronic sources to the physical search of the unsound body as Ephia practices it. Body (extended) becomes ear. An (in)animate realm of subtly shifting textures, isochronic events and disruptions impel the clattering machinery of dream, a terrain of chaotically ordered microcosms, cuts concealing grain.

Accent is placed on receiving from the environment rather than producing. The performances of Djalma Primordial Science-- appearing in theaters, galleries, music venues, derelict buildings, gaping holes in the earth--draw on the particulars of landscape and architecture in order to dismantle the illusory space of "theater" and arrive at an unstable situation, an intensely felt experience.

LISTENING TO THE UNSOUND BODY

Antonin Artaud’s trampling of bone, nerves, and syllables, his signaling through the flames, Taduesz Kantor’s "Poor Object" and "Reality of the Lowest Rank," Tatsumi Hijikata’s weakened body consumed by images, among other sources of inspiration, lead Djalma Primordial Science toward the UNSOUND BODY: fragile, unbalanced, imperfect, decrepit, and cracking. This vulnerable body penetrates the very physicality of emotion, moving beyond expression into metamorphosis. The human discovers relation to her material cousins: saw dust, smoke, rusting metal, sweating stone...

For a society in which production prevails, the ‘useless usage of the body,’ which is what I call dance, is taboo. I can say that my dance has the same basis as crime, male homosexuality, festival, and rituals because it explicitly hurls its uselessness in the face of society.---Tatsumi Hijikata