(I DO NOT KNOW WHERE THIS TEXT IS GOING TO GO AND I HOPE YOU UNDERSTAND, AND IF YOU DON'T IT'S BECAUSE SOMETIMES IM INTELLIGIBLE, LIKE A WOMAN IN A MEN'S WORLD)
A non-linear, danced reflection thorugh words
When I was a child, I spoke as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child; but when I became a woman, I put away childish things (I Co 13:11 - but I also edited a little bit)
When I was a child I learned a lot of things. A lot of rules. A lot of regulations. And they started to become these habits and the only way of living I knew. They were strict, and they made my pelvis strict; they mix taboo, generational trauma, protection, and beliefs.
When I was a child I knew that I did not knew anything and at the same time I knew that I knew a lot of things and I knew I could not know things because they were forbidden. And I knew that there were things I knew that I could not question but I knew they needed to be questioned. And all this knowledge of knowing and not knowing stayed inside of my brain or in sinlenced conversations I had with God. Meditations if you will.
I did not knew that my body could go deeper in those questions and unknowns. My body answers questions, or makes me have more questions, and makes me get out of these silences or unravel these traumas. And I started to realise that moving is lubricating and undoing the societal knots in our muscles. The brain muscles and the back muscles, and the tongue muscles.
Moving and naming are as connected as body and mind, as breathing and thinking, as namign and living. The connection between pelvis and top of the head is a connection between mind and guts, feeling and understanding. Moving our spine is thinking about this connection, thinking about the weight of our thoughts and the weight of our feelings. When I move my pelvis, I realise that voicing words can be done in a way that my ass and my throat have an intimate connection. No wonder we eat and poop, drink and pee; no wonder orgasms are vocalized. And vocalization has to do with how much air you allow to pass and how much air stays in.
When I think about my experience with Luiza Cascon in the Pelvic Dance classes, I realise that my pelvic movements are an initiation to all of these reflections. And then it is my choice to go deeper. When I move my pelvis I move all of my vital energy and I wake up not only my guts, my uterus, and my ass, but I invite my spine, my head, my feelings and my thoughts to be awaken. I shake my beliefs while shaking my ass. I shake normative structures while shaking my ass. I shake depressive thoughts impregnated inside my body. I shake myself in order to shake the world I'm in. I shake myself to shake the words that define the world I'm in. To keep shaking is to keep narrating myself, to keep existing in a continuos flux of transformation. To move my pelvis is to keep the connection between thoughts and guts alive.
March 22nd of 2022 (reflection by Analu)
Rubber bands kind of sore, kind of dry, but with the desire of being wet, silky, and oily.
A few tasty and crunchy snaps remind me of limits, friction, corners bumping eaxh other because they still have no spatial notion. They don't know how big they are.
Today I realised, the pelvic floor forms a crossroad. It is sacred. The sacrum is sacred. Food in, poop out. Penis in, penis out. Finger in, finger out. Joy in, joy out. Join in, join out. Joints vibrating. Air. Voice.
Pelvis is connection between lower and upper body, between earth and air. It is a receptacle that pours water and oil. To lubricate these rubber bands, elastics, joints, articulations, bones, muscled, we must move them. Move the pelvis and all that it is.
It starts with pelvic movements and it expands into personal feelings. It exapnds into collectivity; collective energy. We shake our pelvis together to create safe spaces for us, to shake heteronormativity away. And it was by understanding my pelvis that I could start to understand where my movements could lead me. And it was within this frame that I started to explore how I could tell a story through movement and words to-gether. Connectin the pelvis and top of my head made me connect words and movement improvisation. And this was the beginning of the end of my MA degree in Home of Performance Practices. And this end is the beginning of a set of ongoing practices I'll keep throughout my artistic path.
Besides the Pelvic Dance classes, I have spent some time with Luiza in the studio to build my performance "between us, uncapturable". And during these periods, we navigate between pelvis warm-ups, improvisational tasks I gave to myself, and written reflections. The improvisational tasks were framed within operations of repetitition and transformation, as well building phrases of movement that re-place "ends" with "ands" in order to postpone the end of a movement. During this improvisations, I also used voice, words as part of body movement. And the written reflections always started as a 10min non-stop writting right after the end of the improvisations.
undated (reflection by Analu)
I liked the emerged dreaming subject, remembering and telling the dream through phrases of movement. It's because I dream a lot but I always forget the things I dream about. I repeated some things I did the first time in the second time because that's what came. I also feel that I have a bit of shame when it is a small audience, in this case one person. Because it is more intimate even if I imagine that my dance will be watched by several people. I can use more eye contact. How old is Luiza? What time is it? Yesterday today tomorrow. The hour is a marker that marks a day in a bizarre and circular, and metric way. Why did they choose that the day has 24h? When was that? Does it also have to do with capitalism?
Ok, go back to the exercise stuff! Sometimes I feel that what I'm doing is a big nonsense, and I just really want to do collective things because it's less lonely and makes more sense and is more pleasurable. As much as there may be conflicts, but internal conflicts are also conflicts.
Luiza and I don't know each other very well, but that's ok because any conversation is actually a body to body conversation that you get to know and learn something or someone. I really enjoyed yesterday's warm up and it's great not to be alone in the studio, but it's really hard to take agency of my project because I like openess. It's crazy because when I dance I like to be guided, and at the same time I like to have space to subvert myself while I'm dancing. I think it's a tension between being guided and subverting the guidelines.
April 22nd of 2022 (reflection by Luiza Cacson)
A continuous flow of movement that, even when it stops, follows an internal music. I felt goose bumps at some moments. A tenderness, an affection of recognising there a person and their story. And how we all have our own paths that are so unique but at the same time so the same or almost the same as almost everybody else. And music is universal, it is a treasure, a gift of human creation. It is impossible not to be affected by it. Animals have their music too. I think it's in all of nature. A constant frequency of sound, image, movement, sensations, emotions.
It's been a long time since I just contemplated something simple of a human creation like this without disconnecting. Of course I take a trip inside and remember things about myself, I think about other things, but these trips are generated by what I see and accompany. Like when we listen to a song and at the same time do something else. The music is there and is part of it. Like in a music video. Sometimes I would have these journeys listening to music while walking on the street or in the bus. That life is all a video clip of a film and we are always creating so many narratives.
Dance is that thing that you do while listening to music. It has the most to do with music. Dance and music are kind of one thing. They walk together. It's beautiful to think that this experience is accessible to almost everyone. There are moments in history - there were, or still are - when that was denied to people. Not being able to dance, or sing, or play instruments and listen to music. That's because of the power they have.
May 7th of 2022 (reflection by Analu)
There is this thing of memory that is not linear. The thing of the self-story, the narrating of the self that is an expression and understanding of one's own subjectivity. One lives autobiographically, because narrating oneself is part of building and processing one's identity.
Who am I? Automatic. But the automatic is not me. They are just clothes that have been put on me. We are born naked and from our first pelvis, or rather first house, we are dressed in concepts, gender, race, expectations. And then we automate things like brushing our teeth with the right hand and forget to ask ourselves if that makes sense. I am a mixture of what they say (and said) I am and my own deviations and norms. Repetition and transformation.
There are times when we don't feel seen, but there are times when the generous look of another person reveals other "my-selves" that I didn't know about. Various voices. Various intersections of a line that is not a beginning, middle and end. It's a bunch of tangled circles. A labyrinth that we choose our own paths. Sometimes automatically, sometimes very aware of what you are choosing. Labyrinths like our brain. And then neurons, synapses, blood flow, oxygen, breathing.
Our body has always learned to do several actions without "thinking". But we can remember these actions when everything is a mess, when we don't know where to go. Remembering our breathing, paying attention to it, is a reminder that we are alive. And this is already autobiographical and goes beyond autobiography. And then routine becomes ritual and ritual becomes routine. But there are routines that are strange habits.
May 7th (my traces of Luiza's reflection)
I was distracted by the kitten at the window.... I came back to Analu.
Alone and together.
I want more, it finished too fast.
In life we also choose what we share, but this is also illusion.
May 7th (Analu's poem with Luiza's words)
alone I was distracted
but then I came back to analu
in the sharing together,
I want more illusion
because in life
it finishes too fast
all that's left is the kitten at the window
and a distracted life
May 7th (Luiza's poem with Analu's words)
We are born naked
And then we begin to narrate yourself
Routine or ritual
sometimes in automatic
sometimes very aware of what we choose
Routine or ritual
or just some strange habits
Routine or ritual
and we forget to ask ourselves if it makes sense
To narrate
sometimes automatically
sometimes very aware of what we choose
Until we come across
a generous gaze of another person
And we remember that
we are born naked
And at the end I was profoundly touched and wanted to postpone the end, as I always want to. Sometimes I feel I hold hopes in re-encounters because the end seems unbarable. Perhaps this is why I choose to see "ends" as "ands".
And these traces are traces that led me to the performance "between us, uncapturable".
And I feel that realeasing my pelvis became realeasing myself to shake words and bodies in the time-space I in-habit with-habits and the attempt to escape them.