17 September, 5.30pm
9 October, 4pm and 5pm
10 October, 2pm and 4pm
12 October, 2pm and 4pm
How many souls does one body carry?
In Japanese Bunraku art, we perceive the puppeteer’s movement along with the puppet. The possibility that the puppet emerges from the puppeteer, that the puppet is one and the same as the one who directs it, led me to think about the operation of power on the body and the complex relationship between the subjective and the social. With Under One Body, we find ourselves in a play where the difference between two bodies is subverted, the sharp edges of dualities melt away, and we cannot discern what is animate and what is inanimate, in a similar way as our own faces and those of others become indistinguishable as they blend together.
This performance commences with the actor mobilizing a flexible costume replicating arms, legs and hands, which challenges and redefines the conventional relationship between body and mind. The choreography disturbs the relationship between body and mind to such an extent that the actor questions their own body, fostering the emergence of new relationships. Thus, the actor and the audience become part of a tension in which the distinction between self and other is erased. This is also the audience’s confrontation with the stranger within themselves.
The choreography forces the actor to discover a new relationship between themselves and the costume, engaging them in a struggle with their own limits and facilitating the emergence of genuine tension. We are confronted with the possibility of different existences. Outside the uncanny but modern world, where animate and inanimate, animal and human are one and the same, the play stages the continuous movement of emotional states that resemble shamanic rituals, sometimes animalistic, sometimes mundane and joyful, sometimes withdrawn like an insect, and sometimes seductive. The actor’s personal experience can be both the stranger within who is trying to transcend their own limited body and the dead limbs of another.
Choreography and music form the substructure of a performance in which the legs and arms sometimes revolt wildly under the influence of past memories, or at other times, become docile and soothing with the flow of music. Certain gestures take on a violent nature due to the mechanical artificial limbs’ desire to belong to a body. On the other hand, this conflict can be reversed by the effect of crosswinds.
Inter-subjective conflicts transform into a dance of conflict among limbs and multiple body parts sometimes rule the whole and sometimes succumb to this desire.
We observe the freedom dance of the body and confrontation, which stands against ideological body representations and tries to get rid of the burden of political identity imposed upon it.
This performance shows how blurred the boundary between living and non-living can be, and dancing on this border of uncertainty opens the doors to a world where different existences might be possible.
No booking is required.