Choreography by Lucia Gagliardone
Editing and sound design by Lucia Gagliardone
Videography by Izzy Gray and Kris Harris
This solo work explores the intimate experience of confronting a body in unexpected mourning, through text and movement. Drawing from the writing of author Rebecca Solnit in her book A Field Guide to Getting Lost as well as my own written text, the dance catalogues and deconstructs the loss of small yet monumental elements of life. How does the body experience loss when that loss is undefinable? Imperceptible? Intangible? I have developed a strong perception of and fascination with my body’s reaction and living experience with grieving quotidian life that has disappeared in the wake of the pandemic. Sensuality. Strangers. Sense of community. The ghosts of past dances that desired resurrection everytime I danced. Bewildered by the absence, the negative space in my proprioception. The piece, in three chapters, returns to itself and to the processing of circumstances repeatedly. The words, in my process as well as embedded in the piece, create the framework that I latched on to in the beginning, and allowed me to confront my grief in the middle. Allowing me to return to touch, the flesh coming alive again after a long hibernation of dissociation. A closed loop. I attempt to exist in avoidance despite the mourning. I take inventory and let the grief in. And I reach inside and find the resilience from a return to the positions of safety.
Lucia Gagliardone 