The body as a document of today

LOVE
AMORE
Greek name: Eros
Origin of Mythology: The most ancient legend; born from original chaos; son of Venus and Mars
Main Characteristic: The God of Love

Love or Cupid is described in most ancient sources as a divinity born from the original chaos which keeps the universe united. He is a winged god and with his arrow makes human beings fall in love. To shoot his arrow the god flies over the head of his victim His art is related to the symbol of Hercules which signifies that love wins over the most powerful and strong. Sometimes it is represented with blindfolded eyes, hence the expression 'Love is blind'.

The Body & Eros Dance Festival is a reflection on the body artifices from ancient mythology up to today to escape from the ordinary. Eroticism is holistic for the development of humanity and refers back to the orgy practices used in the celebration of the harvest and fertility rites. It brings together the physical body and the Dionysian animalistic body in which the senses flourish from under the skin. Furthermore, more widely body and desire are present in existential, economical, political and social aspects of life. The search for power within the world of politics has always been a tool to control the body in its most essential needs. But desire becomes the universe which mirrors our emotional needs in the search to complete our inner self. This aspect of the body wishing to unify itself or become total relates to the subject of religion and dance. It is the moment in which the body looks for totality and loses its sense of measure searching for what was missing or even considered to be missing before separation.
Throughout the history of dance many choreographers have addressed the theme of Eros. For many it is the most impressive moment of their artistic creations. One of the most notable was Vaslav Nijinsky.
Today, the eroticism of our own times is moving towards disquieting forms beyond those of striptease shows. It includes the electronic nude in computer graphics, which seem to be able to generate an absolutely realistic image of a body that does not exist in reality. ln contrast to a painter or photographer who refers to a living model, the computer generated image is independent of the existence of an original. The body can be stripped of the appearance of flesh. However, looking back in time, Eros is essentially connected with the taboo of nudity. The Greek experience of nudity stands in opposition to the metaphysical importance the Judaeo-Christian culture gave to clothing. Even before its manifestation in art, the Greek position was expressed in games through the ethical and esthetic ideal of kalokathia (beautiful = good). Here the ideal human figure was presented as essentially nude. For them nudity was not a matter of shame, ridicule or dishonor, but a significance that involved clarity of vision (Greek religion) with an athletic perspective aristocratic in origin. Nakedness offered a contrast to self-possession. Eros looked at the body not as an instrument of subjective will but as an element of ceremonial ritual in a mystical unity of men and God who met each other in an environment of spiritual super-elevation. Dance serves to find body reactions in a new vocabulary and a new corporeal liturgy. The author Eva Meyer observes that dance and movement are always regarded at a first glance to be physical. Yet it appeals to us because of its alliance with a mental movement produced by body, time and space and the consciousness of ourselves. It is a sense of unconstraint, then it becomes a tension of hesitating and waiting for the movement in order to appreciate it and surrender ourselves to it. It is like entering a deep passion which makes us see everything anew. To accept the natural dynamics of our mental capacity, our desire is connected to our increased capacity of reflective conciseness. If blocked, there is a risk of an impoverishment of our sensations'. In this festival we have an opportunity to see everything anew, free of prejudices in a larger appreciation of life and physical art. Desire becomes art and is then further located in mutual relations. In fact it leaves the mind behind and charges life with electrical energy. I’d like to take the words of Virginia Woolf in Orlando and transfer them to the Body & Eros Festival: ”Haill! Natural desire! Haill! Happiness! Divine happiness! And pleasure of all sorts, flower and wine, though one fades and the other intoxicates”.
At this festival let us acknowledge desire as the foremost element connected to the energy and eternal mystery of life which generates art.

October 18th, 2006 ​
Ismael Ivo
from the catalog of the 5th International Festival of Contemporary Dance

Is it a game?
Over the centuries, the art of movement has often come back to the theme of the freeing of desire. Political and social debate over this topic has also been reflected in art and, not infrequently, it was the artists, both men and women, who struggled to attain artistic freedom through the means of their own ability. This playing field is one way of bringing the artist and consumer to the profoundest exercise. In the name of current artistic conventions, the goods are an exercise of precise control. The artist creates a piece, the producer acquires a venue and the public buy a ticket to witness a moment on stage along with hundreds of other voyeurs. And the media have intensively developed communication as the most sophisticated form of voyeurism. Beginning with entertainment such as Big Brother, that is intimately observing protagonists putting their most private stories on display in order to get their so-called “fifteen minutes of fame”, as Andy Warhol put it. Exposing the body has always been taboo, since Elizabethan times and even earlier. The subtle line between ‘covering’ and ‘uncovering’ the body still provokes debate over social behaviour that pertains to the development of society and its cultural differences. Some of the age-old traditions in Africa, such as the Geerewol (the art of seduction), the oriental art of belly-dancing, modern dancehall or contemporary table-dancing, and the still-vital tradition of the Geisha as hostess and entertainer all place the performer's body within the sphere of “art and merchandise”.
In the Body Market’s “auction”, the performer expresses his/her artistic creativity outside the large theatre full of viewers where she/he imagines that meaning will intimately reach each single person in the audience through direct eye-to-eye contact, like a direct message. On the other hand, the viewer normally waits impatiently for the lights to go down, in the hopes that a private moment may begin where the artist will elicit their emotions and make them lose themselves in a dream. And people believe that if their message get through to you, then artists are speaking to you alone. When you go into an artist's room, you pay your price and all you get is a ticket. The buyer becomes a sort of character from CarroIl's Through the Looking-Glass, and What Alice Found There. You've been given the unique chance to walk through that mirror, like Alice, fulfilling the dream of the freedom of your gaze (voyeur) without coercion, worries or external control. For both, this is a definitive experience.
The performer, who is norrnally the central focus, becomes the voyeur of the single spectator, the buyer who has sloughed off his/her anonymous, collective condition but who has won the grand prize of personal gratification. The auction is exercise of a single buyer who buys  fifteen minutes’ worth of private performance. But the auction procedure leads all participants in the room to virtually imagine what might happen.
We are all participants and, together, we walk into fabled world of fantasy.
The auctioneer for this very special market auction is the famous ltalian television personality Rosanna Cancelleri, who will be auctioning off the pieces/dancers one by one to the general public. Each dancer will give an example of their ability in performance fragments lasting from 30 to 60 seconds. The public can then buy them for a private performance that will last from 10 to 15 minutes. The person who outbids the others will be invited to the dancer’s room, where the performance they have bought will take place.

Dancers performing in the following styles will be up for auction:
dominatrix Michela Lucenti, belly-dancing Abeer Will, geisha temptation Yui Kawaguchi, geerewol - African seduction dance Twana Rhodes, flamenco passion Miguelete, bolero desire Ismael Ivo

Ismael Ivo, March 2007
from the catalog of the 5th International Festival of Contemporary Dance