RETRATOS O SI YO FUERA ... / ON BODIES

*FOUR DAYS and MOTUS introducing*performance in English

The international multimedia project “On Bodies” aims to portray a wide variety of women from all over the world through the movement and dance.

On Bodies is about appropriating someone else\'s body: their movements, their body language, their clothes and their space. The dancer observes the ordinary life of the portrayed woman. Through
her own body, the dancer then potrays the woman in her space and clothes.

This project has already taken place in Catalunya and Manila, now it\'s in Prague with future destinations including Warsaw, Beirut and Rio de Janeiro among others.

Photographers capture different people through a camera lens.
Painters paint their impression of different people on a canvas.
Actors try to play the part of different people.
A dancer uses her body to portray different people.

The project includes a screening of the portraits (also the Prague\'s one) made by motion and dance improvisation by Sofia Asencio and a discussion with the public.

Dancer Sofia Asencio selects the women who want to participate in the project. She lives with the person for the next few days. She watches the person at work, with friends, with family and alone, as per agreement. The spectators will then see an improvised performance which uses dance as a means of portraying the person she has watched. It is preceded by a lecture on how this project works. At the same time the shooting of a dance portrait of the chosen and watched person is made in Prague, to become part of the video-portraits from all over the world.

Our life stories aren’t told through fancy words; they’re reflected in the bodies of real people today. Our movements and our ‘look’ express and reflect who and what we are. So let’s capture these bodies and movements and hold them up as a mirror to the public. By seeing ourselves reflected in these bodies, we may start to think about our own identities.

On Bodies is a piece of choreography. Sofia will ‘borrow’ an individual dance or series of movements from each person. The person portrayed will offer Sofia either a dance piece or a series of movements related to their job, surroundings or daily life, and, through her body, Sofia will reinterpret this for the public. The aim is to remain true to the original and simply transmit the borrowed movement. What the public will see will be the sequence of anonymous choreographies that Sofia has created whilst putting the collection together.

THE PROCESS
On Bodies is an anthropological work. An observation, reproduction and record of the movements of bodies of anonymous individuals from all over the world. Each portrait seeks to make contact with the person portrayed; to obtain access to their intimate world and observe their everyday life, space and clothes; to subtly ‘invade’ their life. This should be a warm, intimate process of a single observer ‘invading’ someone else’s life and body. There should be a gentle and respectful relationship between Sofia and the person portrayed.
For each person and context, it will probably be necessary to reach a different agreement in terms of the distance and form of observation. Once this short period of observation is complete, the focus then shifts to the physical material that forms part of the portrait of each person in each case. At this point, within a given space in the everyday life of the person portrayed and dressed in some of their clothes, Sofia then ‘plays the part’ of this person in front of the camera. Here, in someone else’s space in someone else’s clothes, Sofia portrays them through their own movements. This ‘reincarnation’ takes place within a simple and objective framework through the strictly documentary eye of a video camera.