MEDUSA

Medusa is a Butoh performance and project about myth and anger that took shape over 3 years. It is the first part of a research project on family myth and emotion.

I initially worked with fluid movements, imagining my body first as water and then later as stone. Certain images came to me spontaneously while I was dancing: the image of a jellyfish, an aquatic animal that lets itself be carried by the currents of the sea, and Medusa the Gorgon, a monster with sparkling eyes and snake hair who turns those who look at her into stone.

The performance changed each time it was brought on stage, until the Gorgon showed her face and, from the folds of memory, the myth was revealed.

It was a long search, like going into a darkness made of invisible entities, of ghosts, a darkness made of unpredictable images and visions…

Butoh allows us to build a bridge between the worlds of the visible and the invisible, between darkness and light. This bridge was supported by the audience, by the voice of the singer and musician Ivonneth Rosero in the soundtrack and by the musical and temporal structure of the performance.

Medusa stages a myth, a series of images with an archetypal and therefore collective root, which in this case find personal expression. In Greek myth, Perseus beheads the Gorgon. Although this performance of Medusa expresses the annihilation of a powerful and terrifying female, it also transforms, through dance, a metaphor for death into a metaphor for life. For in it, Medusa breaks free from the betrayal she has experienced and takes back her head.

Medusa was performed on a number of occasions between 2016 and 2019, including:

Spazio Nu in Pontedera (IT) in 2016
"Movimenta" festival in Messina (IT) in 2017
LRAC, organised by "Chille de la Balanza" in Florence (IT) in 2017
"La Voce del Corpo" festival in Osnago (IT) in 2018
"Version Clip" festival of Espace Bertin Poirée in Paris (FR) in 2018
Himalayan SubBody Butoh Festival in McLeodGanj (IN) in 2018
Sesalac Butoh camp in Serbia (SCG) in 2019