MARIANA
Contemporary Dance
2023
MARIANA, by Luz Arcas / La Pharmaco, is the name given to the goat who accompanies the wandering Roma people, the one who provides the show, who dances and puts food on the table. It's the mule too, used for trilling by the peasant farmer, the female ass worked to death as well as the little donkey that carries Jesus christ. Irrespective of the age in which we live, the female animal is invariably the workhorse. In this performance, the sounds and the music animate and encourage the forces of performance; whilst the body freely recreates the potency of the animal that allows itself to be led by the rhythm of its organs, just like in an unadorned acapella flamenco song.
It is moved not by some archaic essence but instead by a pure desire to hit upon the perfect form. As we speak of the deep song in flamenco, there is also a deep body in dance. The deep body radiates energy, life, and death. Herein lies its radical and archaic modernity. The deep body breaks into dance, much in the same way, as we are brought to tears, sweat or burst out laughing. The languages are impure, a hybrid as is all that is genuinely alive. A dance sculpted in stone and clay, schematic, coarse, and precise much like alters, amulets, or tools. This dance becomes as abstract and symbolic as it is utilitarian and material.
