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PETER, 6 minutes

PETER, 6 minutes is a short solo performance accompanied by a masked audience and a monotone voiceover. The work investigates how self-definition, choreographic naming, and language construct a frame through which a body is experienced, evaluated, and governed.

Watch the complete performance at festival:display (Royal Swedish Opera, 2015) above, or on YouTube.

Conceptual Framework

“This is no good, this will not do; we cannot place importance on something which has not been experienced, even when its relevance is up for debate.”

PETER, 6 minutes uses the ongoing, self-reformulating notion of “PETER” as an artistic material. Rather than treating identity as a set of static notes or recollection tools, the work positions the name itself as the very apparatus attempting to define, delimit, and understand the body performing it.

By treating “PETER” as a dynamic, linguistic ecology—embracing all modes of inclusion and exclusion—the performance functions as a framework to confront consequence. Through this loop, the solo seeks to challenge and dissolve illegitimate hierarchies and repressive structures, aiming to configure “PETER” as an open practice: safe, caring, loving, motivating, flexible, and non-exploitative.

Performance & Exhibition History

• Display:festival — Royal Swedish Opera (Kungliga Operan), Stockholm (Sep 2015)
• Kafé 44 — Stockholm (2017)

Credits & Specifications

• Format: Solo performance with voiceover and audience score (~6 minutes)
• Choreography & Performance: Peter Mills
• Commissioned by: Koreografiska Konstitutet
• Documentation Film: Full performance recorded live at Kungliga Operan (2015)

Archival & Presenter Inquiries

Documentation, video archives, and score notes for PETER, (the plague) are available upon request for research, curatorial study, or historical programming.

Contact: www.stillpeter.com

Program notes:

PETER, 6 minutes, a short solo companied by a masked audience and monotone voice over.

This is no good, this will not do, we can not place importance on something which has not been experienced, even when its relevance is up for debate.

No longer do I understand this as notes for myself to remember, recollect aspects components and trajectories to perform PETER. As PETER is the very thing which attempts to define and understand PETER therefore the word PETER bests informs PETER on PETER and PETER’s limits, paths, modes, ecologies, lives, content, placement and lalala’s as PETER the word can include all variations of inclusion and exclusion which may occur whilst PETER is, will be and has been. But more over PETER provides PETER with a frame work by which to be consequence for PETER. Using the ongoing reformulating notion of PETER, PETER can break, challenge and destroy all illegitimate hierarchies of PETER. Removing anything which represses, exploits or excludes. In other words to create PETER as a process, practice, engagement, expression and understanding which is safe, caring, loving, nice, motivating, enjoyable, expressive, flexible and fun.

Choreography and Performance: Peter Mills
Commissioned by: Koreografiska Konstitutet