WATCH|TOUCH

Italiano | English

Watch|Touch by Gabriella Riccio

SCHEDA
A research on perceptions,  on touch and sight, but also a work about risk, courage, vulnerability, challenge, intimacy, authenticity. A box of aluminum 4x4x2 with only two entrances: one to watch, the other to touch. Watch | Touch is a series of solo performance for a solo spectator invited to question and choose the only option: is to get in touch or to look at the performer in a space inaccessible to others. The performance calls into question the very concept of dance historically conceived to be looked at,  but also perhaps the most “bodily” among the arts, the body with its physical is the chore. The duration of the solos is variable (5′-7 ‘). The performance is accompanied for its entire duration  is by a set of live electronics. [Gabriella Riccio]

CREDITS
idea choreography dance Gabriella Riccio
live electronics  to be defined
assistant choreographer and foyer Vanessa Buonvino
structure design Gabriella Riccio, realized by BTRLab Marcello Murtas
production caosmos | cia gabriellariccio
genre experimental contemporary dance
variable running time 120′ – 180′

created for the Maggio dei Monumenti 2003


TOUR
Napoli, Maggio dei Monumenti – Parco Viviani, 29, 30, 31 maggio, 1 giugno 2003 prima assoluta
Ostuni, Mavù, 5 settembre 2003


GUESTBOOK some comments of the spectators 

      • Olaf I’m embarrassed. I didn’t know where to put myself. I took a place in front of her. She is on the bench. She begins. I’m used to dance performances… but when she comes so close I was… I’m no longer a spectator… I’m part of the performance. I didn’t want to even touch her, impossible to cross the frontier between actor and spectator. A knot in my throat. She dances and moves only for me. I experienced the same emotion perhaps in intimate relations, the first time, when one doesn’t know how to react. Congratulations, I’m really moved…”
      • Michele A romantic and consumeristic feeling, a very beautiful doll, and traces of light and momentaneous incomprehension, but also 4 minutes outside of time.
      • Enzo It was a beautiful experience that gave a feeling of freedom that I’ll remember as one of the most beautiful ever felt.
      • Aldo To see a body that moves in response to your gaze, that follows your eyes and seems to favour you is not less involving than touching: it’s a way of interacting that is much more profound and subtle. I felt this and I thank you for this absolute experience.
      • Emilia I wanted to be distant but it wasn’t possible…
      • Mauro My feet had eyes, the room a grey metal cube reflects the image of a woman who waits in suspense, I suddenly conquer the earth, the ground, to observe her, understand her, enter the game, the back of the hand reveals its palm and the music begins to enter, to enter into me. The distances play at getting up close, the bodies at further away and closer in the dance of music and silence… the stars, observing glimmers of planets in a black sky energizes me, I’m alive, happy, here. Time has no dimension, and never had it, space finishes asking itself questions, bodies roll in an alternance of true fiction and faked reality, evoking, smelling, touching and then reposing on the incessant rythym of the cardiac bass. A tango tries to shut itself into cadenced steps and calculated rythyms, the game of having for oneself, but space doesn’t ask any more questions, time dances with itself… then slackens and vanishes… a rose turns on the motionless carousel… and another caress… the steps I hear are mine… my feet without eyes… my eyes that smile…….. the mind left outside, put to sleep, asks about the game, about fictions that become realities, looking for pretexts of reasoning, demanding, asking. I answer that the spirit of the game and of the young woman is not given to me to know… and I tell her about a journey in a box-grey: “my feet had eyes.
      • Mauro One touch, muscles tense, eyes hands above all hands arms legs a few instants of falling in love for life… and roses. Thank you.
      • Anonymous I don’t know why, I expected something more complex, conceptual, instead it was good like this… dance and a person who can become a source of inspiration or not… but next time if I enter your space, without the blindfold, please… brava!
      • Rox A space full of true things: feelings, emotions, imaginations. A place in which to project, depending on the circumstances, positive and negative parts of oneself. The dancer can become a mirror in which one views the most hidden part of ourselves.
      • Anonymous Mauro So how does one write something about this…??
      • Patrizia Very stimulating and interesting… I felt it and I had the feeling that I felt myself. It revealed movement that was not only physical… contact that was finally “contact”, neutral yet true and personal. I would like to dance again with her and for longer.