Monotone Symphony

Monotone Symphony is a collaborative performance that reinterprets Yves Klein’s 1960 Monotone Symphony and Anthropometries of the Blue Period through projected light rather than paint. Created by Alex May and Martin A. Smith and presented with GV Art for the fiftieth anniversary of Klein’s original event, the work uses dancers, a single projector, live image systems, and a sustained musical structure to restage the relationship between body, image, and authorship. Instead of leaving a physical trace behind, the performance turns gesture and illumination into something temporary, held only in time and perception.

Nothing is fixed here except duration. By replacing paint with projected light, the performance keeps gesture vivid while refusing a lasting object, so presence is intensified at the same moment material evidence disappears. This negotiation between ephemerality, authorship, and technological mediation sits naturally within May’s wider practice.

Additional notes

• Created by Alex May and Martin A. Smith and presented with GV Art to mark the fiftieth anniversary of Yves Klein’s Monotone Symphony.
• Recreated aspects of Klein’s Anthropometries of the Blue Period using projected light in place of paint.
• Performed with three dancers: Marja Koponen, Geneva Rosett-Hafter, and Daniel Kovacs.
• Format: performance with three dancers, single video projector, single computer, video camera, and stereo soundtrack.
• Approximate size: 6m x 4m x 3m.
• Video documentation: Vimeo