CHRYSALIS BODY
CHRYSALIS BODY
The Way Dance, Movement and Fabric Transform the Body: From Loïe Fuller to Rebecca Horn
APRIL 2024 - SIXTH SENSE
" Bodily extensions and constraints: as she herself defined them, stations in a process of transformation"
Rebecca Horn
Who knows if the lucky spectators who, having come to the theater to enjoy the play Quack Medical Doctor in the United States in 1891, realized that they had witnessed what was the beginning of abstraction in dance. What is certain is that Loïe Fuller, or more simply, La Loïe, had bewitched them, surprised them if not shocked them with what was her first skirt dance, which evolved shortly afterwards into the revolutionary Serpentine Dance that made her famous all over the world.
In her performances, La Loïe began to move, spinning on herself and twirling, with outstretched arms, the voluminous sleeves of her long silk tunic on which beams of light were projected. An irresistible swirl of fabric in which, as if by magic, his body disappeared, swallowed and then regenerated, by an unstoppable dematerializing vortex.
Il potere del tessuto di nascondere e svelare, plasmare il corpo e astrarlo ha attraversato tutto il corso del Novecento, seducendo le avanguardie storiche. Cubisti, futuristi, dadaisti, costruttivisti usarono tutti il tessuto, combinato con i materiali più disparati, per incarnare idee e ideali che ci parlano dal passato di quella che era la loro weltanschauung, la loro visione del mondo.
In many cases, dance and theatre were the privileged places of experimentation: while Fortunato Depero transformed the dancers of his Balli Plastici into futuristic mechanical puppets, Picasso dressed those of Diaghilev’s Ballet Russes with real cubist scaffolding. And Oskar Schlemmer, a leading figure of the Bauhaus in Weimar, revolutionized the conception of the body in movement in space through brightly colored costumes-sculptures, inspired now by the laws of space, now by the guidelines of motion, now by the structure of the human body itself synthesized in geometric essentiality.
The legacy of all these experiences of abstraction of the human body and movement has been nothing short of endless. And it has led us to rethink and redefine the very concepts of body, structure, form, movement, and to ask ourselves how we ourselves define and perceive them today. In theatre, dance, fashion and performance.
These experiences have put down the roots for experiments such as, impossible not to mention, those of Rebecca Horn, whose performances started from the body and its movement. A body in continuous metamorphosis, once again transformed by the fabric-structure that gives it wings, plumage, tentacles and mechanical extroflexions. Bodily extensions and constraints: as she herself defined them, “stations in a process of transformation”.
di Elena Caslini
Fotografo: Alberto Pelayo @_caos18
Creative Director: Veronica Mazziotta
Set designer: Luigi Battaglia
Video: Chicco @_caos18
Stylist: Vita Kop @voidoidon
MUA: Ricky Morandini @w-mmanagement.com
Hair: Domenico Papa @julianwatsonagency
Modelle:
Atusa @thelabmodels
Barbara Sanchez @thelabmodels.com
Ass. fotografo: Alessandro Vergata
Ass. Set designer: Francesca Parisi
Production:
Asia Sardi @themeravigliaagency
Backstage: Alberto Galli
@lligalberto
Location:
Fonderie Napoleoniche
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