Nora's Body, Scenic Essay on Emotions and the Flesh (Habana, 2017) develops an investigation on female experiences that break with the traditional constitutional norms of the family, of behavior and the image that is socially shaped on the feminine and what "being a woman" represents.
What is being a woman? How does a woman, a fundamental center in the formation of a home, think of her freedom in a much more violent way and make the ties that weave family relationships and relationships with her body burst? Our main objective is to show the nuances of this phenomenon from a frontal and unbiased perspective. We are interested in working on localized experiences that shed light on these noisy behaviors in the face of media power systems. Nora's body ... is the sample of what is "reprehensible", chaotic, demonized in the construction of the female figure within our social imaginary. Bringing the crisis to light, showing what is veiled.
NORA. First blow up the family, then blow up everything else.
The social history of a country like Cuba welcomes and at the same time judges many of these behaviors. The intention is to reveal them as a phenomenon in growing development, that exists and that qualifies feminist and gender discourses. For this reason, Nora's text cited above is the axis that moves our discourse as creators, since it presents not a specific history, but a behavior, a way of operating based on a particular desire for subversion. Nora's body… exposes a freedom achieved through transversal, almost countercultural methods.
The work process confronts texts by Elfriede Jelinek, testimonies of anonymous women and mythical women, a musical environment inspired by the music of Schubert, the Cuban feeling and a contemporary psychedelic sound. Therefore, the interpreters (five women), work between two visual frontiers: morbid obesity and extreme thinness. A man crosses the stage for an hour, from one side to the other. The space is immaculate and clean, and everything is destroyed with the execution. Nora practices an exercise in destruction. There are liquids on the floor, torn clothes, tired voices, cloudy water in a cold pool full of diet pills. The experience culminates with exhausted bodies. The body is the only substance that could not be repeated in time with the same form. Exhaustion is the tool to show your finiteness and your fragility.
Many artists have been concerned with exploring this event that discusses the fictions among which we live. And on the Deleuzian thought of "what is a body" comes an additional philosophical definition - "a body is something that can no longer be sustained, that can no longer be sustained" -, this performance-palimpsest wants to become a spectacle here, and retake paralyzing theatrical power. The carnal battle between spectator and performer. She works on the torrential power of images: photography, fashion, cosmetics, media, internet, videos. Therefore, the intervention of the projected materials puts on stage an interactive relationship with the bodies of the actors who perform. What is the truth: the body, its image, its representation, the idea of this representation in the mind of the public? Who is this woman with thousands of faces?
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