“A solemn walk, in suspension between space and rarefied time
we listen to the sound of silence, so that the cries of our unconscious can be heard.
We walk slowly until we have shortness of breath.
Reviving memories, along with our past, dreams and ambitions.
Here we are, moving slowly, in the present space and time, towards the future.
Let us re-appropriate space and time.
A pause for reflection – sometime, to understand something, we need to travel again through past time and space.
Our mind gradually reaches a new awareness,
Our body begins to follow its own rhythm, swollen with a fresh energy.
The slowed pace leaves room for a more dynamic body cadency.
Space and time change form, and become more fluid.
To be self-aware refers to the awareness of others.
The other isn’t a stranger anymore, but an individual within a collectivity.
While we recognize one another, relationships and exchanges are beginning to take shape.
We can feel the strength of individuals in a strong community.
The apotheosis is expressed through the explosion of joy of a collective dance.”
Cent Pas Presque, An Existential Dance by Mariagrazia De Siena
“…The walk starts from uncertain flickering gestures, full of doubts, that help us seek our own boundaries – those that we can’t really see, or that do not completely belong to us, yet. We explore the slowness of the awakening, the almost motionlessness of making a step forward, or that feeling of standing on earth. Then, we proceed by putting our feet on the ground, leaving clear and imprinted footprints in the landscape. Tracing a path, defining a dance together, through a walk, that can be followed by those who are behind. Finally, this will lead to walking along with others, with the other person standing next to me, until we find a common rhythm, a movement, that bounces off in the flow of togetherness.
(…) At the same time, how can we, ourselves, overcome the incommunicability and confinement of those people close to us, to build a collective project, a community model of integration, united in diversity? These individuals are walking, advancing towards something they can’t see from their own perspective – if not as a pure possibility, something that isn’t yet happening – but that can’t be identified as a utopian goal for the society to come. The simple meaning of the walk, walking together, each of us following its own rhythm, later becoming a proper dance, nourishes the essence of a community, which moves forward, towards a point of arrival.
Invisible, distant, as the alluded line of the horizon.”
Fragments from 100 Pas Presque, from the performance by Taoufiq Izeddiou
(with the complicity of 60 inhabitants) by Elisa Castagnoli
All photos were taken by Mariagrazia De Siena.
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