CASCAS DE MEMÓRIA: Nº2
Creation 2018
Choreography and performance: Solveig Rocher
Residency support: Forum Dança| Serviço de Emergências 2018 do Teatro de Ferro
Shows:
30 Aug 2018, Forum Dança, end of residency presentation
31 Aug 2018, Bienal de Cerveira
17th Oct 2018, Festival International de Marionetas de Porto (work in progress)
3rd Apr 2019, Festival de ESMAE
16th May 2019, Quintas Nomadas Mira galerias|artes performativas
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?
Nº2
“Nº2” is a duette based in the exploration of the possible relations that can exist between my body and the cloth’s. It’s creation became an exercise in working with non-human objects according to Harman´s ‘object oriented ontology’. What kinds of movement are produced within such a horizontal relationship?
But the original image, the one with which i started the piece, was of memories as seperate entities from our skin, flesh and bone. Entering, living and changing us, accumulating and travelling from person to person through time and generations. This interpretation now remains in the piece as a ghost.