Creació comunitària «Cos, atenció i escriptura».

In this residency we propose addressing a technique that, together with Rolando San Martin, we apply internally in the creative processes of the PSiRC company and which is the subject of a study in progress. It is a practice that highlights the value of what the circus can contribute to contemporary and future writing of stage pieces.

 

From where?

We try to recover the value of the body in stage creations. Not only the choreography of concepts, symbols and metaphors, but the presence of bodies. Not so much the illusion of fiction, but the immediate power of danger and risk that a body takes.

It is a question that arises in a specific historical and social context, meaning, humanity's transition towards independence from biological bodies.  Vital functions are increasingly being delegated to technological prostheses. The human body is becoming a secondary actor, except to create an object for display.

In this sense, it is also necessary to review the symbolic charge that we attribute to the virtuous body. This virtuosity creates a kind of absolute presence of the circus gesture. It is a gesture that by itself cannot be representative, it cannot bring to the stage what has been present elsewhere, so the symbolic weight falls on the value of the practice itself.

 

Understanding the symbolic importance that circus on stage then receives, rather than pointing to a superiority of the human being, an idea that crystallised alongside the industrial revolution, we present the impossibility of overcoming one's own limits as a tragic figure. Rather than highlighting the capacity for domination, we want to focus on the effect that circus has on a person's body, and from there produce a guide for structuring circus creations.

From this virtuous, tragic point of view, we believe that it is possible to create content that does not conflict with the form of the stage.

We believe that this view of the virtuous body, more tragic than dominant, can create meaning. A sense that on stage allows us to bring content and form closer together, that distances us from the dichotomy of contemporary circus between narrative and circus technique.

 

Materiality, signifier and meaning coincide.

We believe that the practice of circus techniques has a component of denaturalising bodies and objects, with exceptional care and attention. This state, if we manage to strip it of mimicry and representation, can create the "enchantment" to which Erika Fischer-Lichte refers when she speaks of stage realisations:

 

The aesthetic experience is not only produced by exceptional events, but also by the perception the ordinary... Everyday bodies, actions, movements, things, sounds and odours to be perceived as extraordinary and transfigured.

When the ordinary becomes extraordinary, when dichotomies collapse and things turn into their opposites, the spectators perceive the world as enchanted. It is this enchantment that puts them in a state of liminality that can transform them.