Solveig Rocher is creating a collection of dance pieces named “Cascas de memória” in which she turns herself into a dancing archive and archivist. Originally trained as an illustrator, her practice revolved around the solidification in drawn lines or sculptures, of what she considered to be ephemeral things: ideas, memories, events etc...
Turning into a performer, she is confronted with the strangeness of creating something that seems to disapear as soon as it is made.

Memories are fragile, intangible and in constant danger of disapearing. If a memory was stored in a body, maybe it would be safe, protected from forgetting. And this body would contain and keep within it, like an egg shell, what has already been.

In european tradition, any embodied practice (holes dug in the place an important event occured, walking, singing, dancing, telling stories) is considered ephemeral, it does not leave a trace. And so these techniques are not trusted with memories to keep and the document becomes the sole keeper of the past for the future.
But in this collection, Solveig turns herself into a dancing archivist, transporting and reproducing at each performance the pieces stored in her body.

How different is a memory kept in flesh and its gestures from one in ink on paper? What are the implications of keeping the past in the present using embodied practices? What are the implications of a white european consciously choosing to turn herself into a dancing archivist? Memories contained in gestures repeated again and again persist through time? Is it not possible to return to what was? Performance really does not save anything?

Nº1

“Nº1” is a durational dance that repeats and accumulates constantly. In its 34 gestures, Solveig saves memories of her dead grandparents. She dances like a guttenberg press, a cd or a photocopy machine: on and on, again and again, over and over, constantly reproducing the gestures, as people come and go. The repetition of a gesture makes it persist through time? Is it not possible to return to what was?