My performances explore the conviction that there is no more efficient way of communicating and understanding than experiencing.

This conviction can be seen as a reaction to Marcel Duchamp’s introduction of non-retinal art and the (performing) artists that have continued to develop this groundbreaking concept: Arco’s work is founded on the understanding that one cannot truly communicate and/or understand by just relying on intellectual reasoning, nor by exclusively following senses and emotions. Experiencing is the union of both.

With each of my choreographic approaches, I try to formulate the question more clearly: How can a theme, a concern be translated into an experience for the spectator (rather than remain just an intellectual confrontation, or rather than become a hermetic outpour of emotion)?

Within the frame of this question the focus has always been on a choreographic language that searches for simplicity in order to go beyond the limits of verbal language.
In all my works the movement language navigates between the two classic poles of “dramatic narrative” versus “abstraction”. My goal is abstraction, but my approach to abstraction is to construct it from a narrative, dramatic starting point and to efface this starting point along the way by stylizing the language. I call this a Filled Abstraction, or Abstract Dramaturgy.

Abstract Dramaturgy tells a story through the modulation of Time, Space and Energy – the three essential parameters of dance. People on all continents experience these same parameters every day. And focusing the work in this particular direction means focusing on the strength of dance: there is no borderline of language, communication passes directly, via the body itself.
The danger in body language is “convention”. Mirth goes beyond convention by concentrating on extreme simplicity of structure and language. It “peels simplicity” in order to reach a deeper level for people to share beyond different backgrounds in culture, education etc.

“To peel simplicity” is like diving into a lake. Its surface is a simple flat shape, but underneath lies a whole universe of hidden landscapes and lives.

It is the same with movement. If a movement is nothing but a movement, it is mechanical, perhaps technically virtuous, but in the end boring. Movement can be a symbol, expressing something – a feeling, for instance. But then, if a movement expresses a feeling too explicitly there is no room for suggestibility. Suggestibility is the door to the imaginary. And the imaginary is the closest relative to experience.

I believe that simplicity and suggestibility function together like a cable and the electricity passing through, or like a street and a car.

A good example of simplicity in art and the force of its suggestibility is the Japanese Haiku:

In my new robe
This morning –
Someone else.

Or:

Sick on a journey –
Over parched fields
Dreams wander on.

Or:

Summer moon –
Clapping hands,
I herald dawn.

(All three poems from Basho)

Mirth approaches via simplicity the poetic space that suggestibility can open, to translate the complexity of a subject into a simple artistic language.

It is important to mention that I see simplicity far removed from shallowness. It is rather a condensation, a concentration on the essential.

The essential in a performance is to experience. Experience the present moment. It is very simple. Mirth explores the complexity of the simple.