POLITICS OF TOUCH

I am not a soloist. I am not used to working alone. I always need another body in front of me to move. I love working with groups. I love bodies together. The language of touching fascinates me and its thousand of possibilities. Maybe 10 years of Judo is the reason behind this characteristc of my work.

It is always about touching (in the big sense of this word) or about bodies getting together, negotiating the borders of the sharing. I realize I justify the creation of physicality when it’s happening out of the encounter. My body become active because of other bodies. My physicality begins because of the action of approaching or confronting other skin. Touching is, in general, one of the physical elements of my processes and it is, clearly, one of the main themes of my work.

Touching is for me an event, a political gesture that negotiates transgression and understanding. The skin as a meeting point, the realization of the impenetrable, touching is an experience of the encounter and to perceive a limit. Touching is both sharing and separation. Actual and potentiality. Touching proposes a violation of critical distances inviting at once intimacy, tension and conflict. As J.L. Nancy said, “ touching one another, with their mutual weights, this is what make them bodies”. And as Erin Mannin wrote: “BECAUSE TOUCH IS ALLOWING MYSELF TO BE TOUCHED BY TOUCH” How would I be able to touch deeply the audience, to cross this “skin” that resists, because of a need of understanding and recognizing? How could I propose a space in which to provoke an encounter? Where could I negotiate my “need of penetration” and my ability to enter and pass through? How could I remain in their skins and to break their role based on resistances and on forgetfulness?