Jouissance (Baroque-Midi)
>>Jouissance (baroque-midi)<< is a dance work of postponement, a dance that situates itself in the longevity of foreplay. Transitioning through a series of quasi-pleasurable positions or dances or actions, alone or auto-erotic, it attempts to work-through an abundant climax, edging continuously on the excessive. Foreplay is time prescribed before an event, a certain maintenance of the pre-emptive, an accidental prelude. Making its way along a slippery crescendo, deferring any outcome, >>Jouissance<< pivots continuously on itself whilst constantly transgressing its pivot. Lingering in fore-pleasure, dance becomes unclear in its measure of value. A powerful gush, a choking of continuous jubilation, an excess of movement pleasure that is lodged in the throat and reels into bliss. The extremity of dancing becomes almost intolerable, for Jouissance, it occurs outside any measure of value or idea of a threshold.
>>Jouissance (baroque-midi)<< is untranslatable, the English language fails to render possible a word for a form of pleasure that delicately balances on the edge of excess. Departing from this translational failure, in his first solo work, Sidney’s desire to understand Jouissance is that which drives the creation, a desire which he has accepted is intrinsically impossible. He dances alongside, with, and inside the word, although alone, Jouissance is never in solitude, and always implies a relation to something other. The dance of bliss does not adhere to a singular climax, but rather develops in an extended interval of leisurely enjoyment, a complex economy of attention and distraction.
Sidney dances to become an object to himself, powered by a constant renewal, a straying from oneself, a straying in such a way that one is sent back to a self beyond any possible identity. It is something like suffering, the abandonment of a subject capable of saying ‘I’ an arrival to a limit that can only be surpassed… for such a place is unbearable to think of.
Set to an original score, the music composition program Ableton becomes a choreographic canvas, projecting text, Christian iconography and selected works by Gian Lorenzo Bernini. These images have been converted into Midi files, producing a landscape of experimental electronic music.
Sidney Barnes 
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