Slip

Description

SLIP by Paul Abbott was born from a three-day residency at Café OTO in London in 2023, extending his current work with a hybrid acoustic-digital drum set. Here, the drums and synthetic sounds are connected by a network of limbs, cables, and signals, creating a dialogue that is both tense and intimate. For this residency, Abbott imagined a gallery of characters - crystal, lleaf, reiy.F, reiy.C, strike, nee, qosel, sphu, and aahn - each characterized by distinct movements and instrumental approaches. He choreographed these figures into dances shaped by emotional states and behavioral patterns, then arranged them into three layered compositions: one for each day. These works blend percussion, electronic textures, lighting, and spatial sound to create vibrant and evolving performances. Like organisms, Abbott's characters react, transform, and adapt. Their behaviors echo influences such as Roscoe Mitchell, Sun Ra, Nathaniel Mackey, and Milford Graves, whose reminder that "breathing varies, so the heartbeat never has that metronomic tempo" resonates here. In SLIP, the rhythm resists the grid, embracing change as the true pulse of sound and movement.