Striga Form was commissioned and created for Pretty Good Not Bad music festival 2016 featuring music by okpk forthcoming EP Pleasure Seekers. This project marks the beginning of many collaborations with okpk with the sound influencing Broken Rhythms signature style Rhythmical Contemporary.
Inspired by the performance space loft location and realising half the audience would be watching from above we took the idea of a bird’s eye view and called it Striga Form which means owl or more specifically birds in the order of Strigiformes. This work was remounted as part of the Dance Days after party.
Review from Ridethetempo.com for Striga Form
By Toni Hiatt
Sheltering into the stairwell connecting Robazzo’s floor stage to the upper-loft, I got cozy with my neighbors as local producer OKPK took stage-right, and a trio of dancers donning electric blue wigs struck poses in the dim light. Lurking in the shadows behind them, I glimpsed the silhouettes of what appeared to be kiddie-pools. The opening track from Pleasure Seekers, OKPK’s forthcoming EP, propelled the spectacle into motion. Limbs unfurled beneath a yellowy-red spotlight, as inky shadows spilled across each dancer. The initial minutes comprised of a dialing-in of facial expressions and staggered release of audible sighs, as if each dancer were awaking inside the their bodies for the very first time. And the energy soon escalated. Wigs abandoned, spatial manipulation expanding to include leaps and bounds, and even horizontal floor feats. Though emotionally charged, an enduring feeling of alien-ness permeated the performances entirety and this was no doubt brought on by OKPK’s percussive polyrhythms and gorgeous space-church synths. The inherent nature of his sound was then reciprocated through the choreography’s focus on symmetry and patterning. It really was a perfect symbiosis between movement and sound, so in sync and complimentary that the notion these two compositions had been conceived of separately seemed preposterous. The mysterious blue kiddie-pools inevitably made their geometrical contributions towards the end. Used as props for spinning, then as shields, and finally as their design might suggest, water vessels from which the dancers drenched themselves in final expressions of space-age ecstasy.
One of the most reinforcing moments a producer can have, I think, is seeing a group of people groove to their tunes, so I can only imagine the thrill and satisfaction of having three professionally trained bodies interpret your work. OKPK is a creative man about town, whose reigning production skills have seen him involved in numerous collaborations and projects. It feels about as special as the sighting of a rare and precious bird to see him unaccompanied on a stage playing his solo creations (or maybe I just need to get out more?) Too rare as well, are these alchemical moments, when locals so deeply invested in their own artistic mediums come together for these fusion-type performances. Hopefully this initial push by PGNB has been enough of an inspirational spark that these types of platforms will only continue to grow more prevalent.
Broken Rhythms 