Lucia Gagliardone

All My Bodies has two iterations, I and II. In both, the use of visual media plays with texture, sounds from quotidian life, and symbolism. All My Bodies (II) is haunted and accompanied by a projected image of my body, while All My Bodies (I) employs mirrors and projected video. This 2-year project is an autobiographical solo, in which my story is first translated through automatic writing, line drawing, and pedestrian observation into movement. I uncover moments of divergence and disintegration within myself and I yield to my flesh as I confront these coexisting identities. Reflecting in an automatic writing that “I am, at times, terrified of accessing my true story”, I accepted that it was hard to confront the thoughts and memories that came up from intimate explorations of the self. In vulnerability and in the comfort of movement, I integrate my intimate plot lines and find wholeness. During the dance: The breath that washes through my body is electric. Taut, then melting, my bones and muscles play with the gestural and spiraling movement, originally improvised from my daily life. Inhale, exhale, the swoosh of my arms inspires my core to swing to the side, to which she responds by shooting forward, driving my body through space in a glorious sprint and leap. A revolution ensues, my limbs, my organs, my heavy head, and my mountain of mischievously bouncing curls. I take two slow steps forward, sending energy with an arching arm into the core of the earth, grateful for the space to tell my story and for the body I tell it with.