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“Reverse Discourse” at Caleido2021

In “Reverse Discourse” I wanted to provoke emotion without mediating the gaze. To challenge the public to recall their own experiences or those transmitted and retransmitted, perpetually perpetuated by external factors whether we are talking about people or the media. I used the body as a means of visual connection to an absurd dialogue. A bodily dialogue exposed in lines with distinct temporalities, which almost never intersect. An organic dialogue that exposes the dominator-submissive perspectives in multiple hypostases that outline the past and the present. A somatic dialogue that animates the traumas stored in our collective and individual memory. A visceral dialogue about assuming power and exploiting it in predominantly dictatorial, manipulative directions. ”

Ioana Marchidan

“Reverse discourse” is what the title says. An inverted speech. Depersonalized. Offered naked. Fragile. Intimate. A performance about body politics in which Ioana Marchidan short-circuits the collective body memory, identifying and bringing to the surface deeply rooted gestures, in order to unarchive them and decompose them through a body slide towards an abstract choreography. This cataloging and re-editing of the memory of submission, of the suppression and repression of the meanings of gestures, integrates the public as a participant in the dialogue, as a submissive observer. It is interesting to follow in this micro performance the body movement, before the gestures take shape. The inventory of gestures comes as an oscillation between submission and oppression until the body gives up the difference between the two and gets caught up in the energy of change between them. The choice to construct discourse in this form, an empty back in a space that oscillates from dark abyss to video projections, implies vulnerability. And vulnerability implies an assumed fragility, which allows focusing attention on the essence of the message: the destructive force of abuse of power.

Choreography, concept and performer: Ioana Marchidan
Sound design: Alexandru Suciu
Light design and video projections: Hermina Stănciulescu
A Linotip production – Independent Choreographic Center

Length: 50 ‘
Release date: 2019