Excerpt from 7:00 to 9:00.
Rosalia – and other ways for her to be quiet
Descriptions
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Rosalia
A mixed race Filipino and white woman with long black hair wearing a dress that is white on top and light pink on the bottom is standing in the middle of a proscenium stage with a dark background. She is out of breath and has a pleasant expression on her face. She says the words “this is just who she is always a place for this, a time for that, everything under control. She just loves control. doesn’t know who she is without it.” While repeating the words she makes deliberate hand and arm gestures, while occasionally slapping her hand over her mouth to interrupt her speech. Eventually with repetition her movement grows more out of control and the texts falls away. After a minute of frantic movement, the song “Dream a Little Dream” comes on. The movement turns into a repeated mouth slap until the music stops and then the dancer grabs her chin and turns to the audience.
I’m thinking about what Rosalia’s dance is telling us about the body. For me, the dance points to the slippage between appropriate normative bodies and the “controls” one is expected to exert over ones body, set against the constant threat of one’s own, other (bodily) forces. The social world is imposed on the messy real world of embodiment: The efforts of the individual dancer to navigate contradiction within herself, having absorbed the socially appropriate regime of bodily correctness. This is perfectly exemplified by a hand over her mouth to extinguish her words or cries, pulled off by the other hand. There is also a false laugh, a brushing of her skirt as if to compose herself, a gesture of womanly etiquette (left hand, palm down under chin, the other arm reaching a palm out as though to be kissed by a gallant fairy tale prince), swiped back.
This brings up for me the body as having an INSIDE experience of pain, of spillage, of messy, real, lived, chaotic body-ness and the need to present an OUTSIDE veneer of control, femininity, docility, composure, etc. For me, these contradictions ultimately move between helplessness and fury.
Please hold off on engageing with my video for now. I am going to write a new description and find a way to add captions of my text inside the video. Thanks for you patience and guidance on this, it is much appreciated.
Memories of the dread of “organization” – to will the body to make a shape that is permitted, controlled. The repeated, accumulation reminds me of when I have to release my left arm from a spasm; a fight. The inherent violence of straightening/controlling/organizing also elicits a strange pleasurable pang. Am I a masochist, then? I like it? The smile or repairing facial expression is outer-focused; does it serve her? The final image is haunting – suspension.
I see a body fighting for justice. I feel a connection in my body to feeling out of control. I remember the effects of repetition in my body and how I rely so much on it to spawn understanding.