2014
TRANS is an experiment of desire as potency and raw matter of disruptions and transgressions. The shapeless flesh of desire is like a Golem, a monstrous creature born from clay and endowed with elemental forces. Although it was created in the image and likeness of a human being, it has no soul or voice. In addition to be inspired by the Hebrew myth Golem, TRANS also swallows the Greek myth Prometheus and the famous Dr. Frankenstein, tormented character of the novel by Mary Shelley) which are representations of existential crises. TRANS thematizes in a tragicomic way the conflict between divine power and human subjection, desire to transgress values and commandments, desire to transform and to break with the establishment.
Concept, choreography, costume, make-up, dance: Maura Baiocchi
Contemplated by the Municipal Programm for Dance in the City of São Paulo TRANS was presented in Europe, Argentina and Brazil:
RUSSIA/ST. PETERSBURG April 23, 2014
Freud’s Dream Museum of Saint Petersburg
On occasion of the project “Actualités de Frankenstein: figure du monstre dans notre société contemporaine” organized by the University of Saint Petersburg, the Freud’s Dream Museum and Research Group Pandora (CRPMS, Centre de Recherches Psychanalyse, Médecine et Société, Université Paris Diderot)
FRANCE/PARIS – May 03, 2014 – THÉÂTRE DE L’AIRE FALGUIÈRE – Organized by Nourit Masson-Sékiné
BELGIUM/BRUSSELS – May 8, 2014 – At BAMP (Brussels Art Melting Pot) – Organized by Rodrigo Marcó del Pont
ARGENTINA – November, 2014 – University of Buenos Aires – Congreso Internacional de Artes. Revueltas del Arte
TRANS was premiered in São Paulo/Brazil in September 20, at the Municipal Dance Festival at Olido Gallery.
TRANS-GOLEM OF MAURA BAIOCCHI
By Viktor Mazin, founder of the Freud Museum o Dreams, St. Petersburg/Russia.
Article about TRANS performed by Maura Baiocchi on April 23, 2014 at the colloquium “Actualities of Frankenstein: the figure of the monster figure in contemporary society” organized by the University of St. Petersburg and the Research Centre of Psychoanalysis at University Paris Diderot. Translation: Wolfgang Pannek
1. DESGRAMMATICALIZATION AND NON-COREOGRAPHY
The dancing of Maura Baiocchi is unpredictable. Her movements do not follow a priori any score. Its grammar never fits into a recognizable choreographic scripture. Time and again, her movements lose coherence, they suddenly cease, become something else. The choreography by Maura Baiocchi cannot be translated into any concrete language of dance and does not reach any final form. You could say that it is not a language nor a scripture, neither a choreography, but what Jacques Lacan called “lalangue”.
The economy of Maura’s movements is the translation of the figure of the Golem in a state of transformation, a figure which, repeatedly, finds no form. The Golem is that what does not allow to be captured by a form. .
This is where monstrosity creates roots. It is finds itself in an unfathomable form, in a letter without fixation, a syntax in disarray. It is a choreography of transformations, beyond the control of any grammar, which metamorphoses in an non-coreographic trance.
The form does not consolidate. The formless Golem cannot be identified, subjected or controlled. No matter who might be his creator, he will forever remain a non-born, a transformer of birth.
2. RETRACING TRIANGLES
Who creates that what dances? Who dances that what dances? Golem conducts Maura or Maura conducts Golem? Golem does not possess Golem as well as Maura does not possess Maura.
And, in general, Maura of the Golem and the Golem of Maura do not dance here, not only here, in this generic passage, the narrow path of the Freud Museum of Dreams. The non-coreography unfolds in two parallel abstract triangles, whose forms are occasionally subject to disaggregation, as professed by the imaginary mandala.
Maura-Golem traces trough the trajectory of her movement an invisible triangle: Letter – Truth – Death. The Golem comes to life by the word “truth” (emet). But it suffices to erase one letter of that word, Aleph, and “death” (meth) arises. The set Letter – Truth – Death is never completed, because it converts into another triangle: Letter – Truth – Desire. Everything is on the threshold. The threshold between life and death. Trance.
If we wanted to narrate everything in a logical sequence, our starting point would be, of course, the appearance of Maura in the generic path of dreams which accompanied her interest related to the surroundings. Her Golem seemed to recognize the others, he played with them, sat on their legs, shared an apple. You could say that Golem-Maura simultaneously seduced and tamed. But suddenly everything changed. As if in the blink of an eye a cloud of plumb closed a sunny sky throwing strident and incandescent. thunderbolts to the Earth. Terrible.
3. THE TERRIBLE AWAKENING OF DESIRE
Terrible – the frontier between the artificial and the natural. Terrible – the nebulous understanding that this frontier is mobile. Terrible because the artificial and the natural are indistinguishable. And the Golem – a creature made of clay, of inanimate matter, comes to life with the help of the technique of a secret knowledge, artificial, contained in the letter. The letter, Lacan reminds, inspires.
But the letter may be dead. It may uncontrollable, because it does not know other letters, the existence of the others. Disruption. Here there is no audience. The non-coreography closes up on itself, on its own letter, on the dead letter. The dance of the Golem of Maura is the dance of a dead letter.
The dead letter pervades like a cramp the crude prime matter of the real. The Aleph dances through itself. The first letter returns again from the real. The trance of Maura Baiocchi shifted the skies over the path of dreams.
Viktor Mazin