Fast Forward - video stills - (2011)

Fast Forward uses analogue and digital techniques for video recording and takes inspiration from the book "In de schaduwen van morgen" by Johan Huizinga.

The work is recorded in cenital view and portrays a series of exercises aid by the use of diverse objects and props that push the body to move and adapt different and sometimes awkward ways. Simultaneously a beamer projects the action in real time while a second camera records the projection as the final outcome.


Blank Space - Ghost Body
is an incarnation, a ghost, a camouflage, the play between object and subject. Belongs to the supernatural world. An invocation. A ritual of disappearance. The calling for the invisible, becoming a medium for imagery, vanishing. The movement is intense and slow, takes its time while the body transforms: a sculpture or a picture, an entity or a human being, a table, may be a woman….

Concept, direction and interpretation: Melissa Cisneros
Supported by:
Concell Nacional de la Cultura i les Arts (CoNCA), Beca per recerca y creaciò (2009)

Performances: 10 times 6, ada Studio & Bühne, Berlin (May 2009);
IN_Formales, La Poderosa, Barcelona (February, 2009)
Hunter and Hunted is inspired in the Aztec deity of Xolotl associated with movement, life-death and transformation powers. According to mexica mythology Xolotl is duality, the god of the spirits who helps the dead cross to the underworld. In this piece two performers concealed by a carton animal-like mask resemble each other and are guarding a space concealed by two almost identical wooden structures.

Presentation: Gerrit Rietveld Academie, Amsterdam (2005)

Solo Performance
is a dance performance base on a
simple aleatory structure consisting of interpreting 5 different songs
(punk, classical, pop, electronic, and a Mexican song) to generate contrasting and unrelated actions and movement material that traces a concentric pattern in space. The use of objects such as a pair of lemons and a paper bag aid in the unpredictability of the structure. The piece is dance in silence except for the Mexican song which - mimicking the lyrics - I translate to the audience as part of the movement material. In this piece I explore a physicality that escapes meaning and looks for the impossibility of repetition within movement.

Concept, choreography and interpretation: Melissa Cisneros
Light design: Ellen Knopps

Performance: het Melkweg, Amsterdam (2004)

Photo: Theo van Loon
Dances not to be seen is a serie of live performances dedicated to making small daily rituals. Each dance is developed and performed in specific spaces of the house creating intimate environments. The outcome of the performance consists of a description of the happening, a written registration of the experience and a photographic documentation that tries to capture the moment, the actions and the atmosphere.


In QUESTION PLAZA, I was busy with how the form of the myth is use to explain what in the world of logic and science has no validity, for example, apparitions, supernatural healing powers, telepathy. For this piece I look into sources like Jomanda (a Dutch controversial spiritual healer) communicating warnings or messages to people in different forms as a medium and people refer to as entities that communicate with 'the underworld'.

For the movement research I studied the possessed body controlled by supernatural powers, like in shamanistic rituals, in Catholicism, the body exorcised by a priest, and the use of masks in prehispanic dances as the medium to communicate with the spirits or the dead.

Performance: Michel Mostertman and Melissa Cisneros

Presentation: School for New Dance Development, Amsterdam, 2004

The body as a mold that produces images and contains experiences. A dance that suggests meanings who at the end are assigned by the viewer.  A performer observing the movement mechanics she produces. An anti-climax.

Image Be What See This How To Know is a solo dance piece consisting of five movements that repeat and are extended in a 10 minute duration. Together with a small video projection of random edited images and sounds recorded from a small synthesizer the performance operates under the idea of repetition and non-development.
Repetition, not as a mechanical action but as strategy to observe in detail a movement that can never be the same once performed for a number of times, and non-development as a way to find other constructions that do not necessarily imply beginning, climax and end but that have the potential to exist endlessly. With these principles, the elements are constructed by the performer using the same approach as the choreography. An idea represented thorugh three mediums.

Concept, direction, interpretation, sound and video: Melissa Cisneros
Presented at the School for New Dance Development (2001)