A Strange Body
Inside
“The sole work of La Loba is the collecting of bones. She collects and preserves especially that which is in danger of being lost to the world. Her cave is filled with the bones of all manner of desert creatures: the deer, the rattlesnake, the crow. But her speciality is wolves” (Pinkola,1992, p. 42)
I stopped being lost when I started to collect bones.
These bones were actually inside me,
and now, outside they start to come together,
to form a skeleton.
But... at first, I do not recognise the white figure that emerges.
Is it a wolf?
What was it doing inside?
Could you help me understand?
The making of the video-dance Becoming was the way to start this project. While analysing the concept of Extimacy and doing a critical review of the tale The Little Red Ridding Hood, I used tools from contact improvisation, somatic movement, and enhanced sign language to start shaping the body of the research. As it is common in the field of practice-led research, the path was not linear. I started wondering about the paradoxical aspect of humanity and the path led me to re-discover a wolves-inspired bodily state that was insinuating a relation to my identity as a woman.
A very important part of the inquiry was the exploration of the dancer’s bodies as a projection surface. What expressive aspects emerge from projecting one body onto another body?
Navigating on this page you can discover an article that presents the discoveries of that stage. The article is divided into three segments: The birth of Wolfe, Looking for the Woman, and The Process of Becoming. Also, you can watch the video-dance before you continue the journey.
