Intercontinental Collaborations 3—The Symmetry Project

“Two naked bodies interact through a highly structured improvisational score. Manipulating our perception, they reveal the body’s awkwardness; it’s potential failure and finiteness, creating space for the unknown, the wondrous, the infinite.”

This was the description at the core of Intercontinental Collaborations 3 – The Symmetry Project by Jess Curtis/Gravity with Maria Scaroni.

The dancers, seemingly flawless in proportion and execution, began clothed in fur coats; eventually shedding them through a series of isolated twists, jarred undulations, and contorted turns of the limbs and torsos, as if skin off a snake.

Though my friend hissed that it was real fur, I appreciated the coats. I couldn’t help but smile at the clever leap from caveman wearing animal fur to 21st century fashion. It goes along with this idea I have of the company’s work sometimes reminding me of a Blade Runner-esque quality of time and culture.

She and I used to dance naked with Dandelion Dancetheater. Through The Undressed Project, we collaborated to choreograph to shakes of cellulite, angles of bone… we even integrated Annie Sprinkle’s Bosom Ballet across a multi-gendered cast of performers. Though I had always appreciated nudity, it wasn’t until I danced naked for an audience that I fully accepted my body. But this was a different kind of naked.

Nudity is such an odd thing. It’s strange that we’re not more familiar with the naked body, especially our own. The reasons why we cover up, and when we choose to study nudes as art has always amused me. I think of culture when I see a naked body. In the case of the pale and lean Curtis and Scaroni, I thought them reminiscent of old European era art, such as Greco-Roman culture. A study of symmetry like da Vinci. There was another cultural reference to the nudity which quickly came to mind of course, which was 90’s pornography. (Not a hard jump to make, with a male and female performer positioning their bare torsos into various 69 and reverse cowgirl positions. The people at Nerve.com have Sex Position of the Day cards depicting similar, often symmetrical, configurations.)

While the thought of sex was there, I didn’t get a since of any sexual energy from the duo. What I got was a mechanic, geometric study. A question and answer display (with obviously many hours of movement invention) showing how their bodies fit. How a person can be mathematically symmetric. It didn’t look easy; it didn’t look difficult. It looked clean and focused, formal and very very controlled. Still, even. Until in unsuspecting increment, the individual movements sped up and Scaroni lay jittery on her back on the marley, and Curtis like a wine opener sprang in wide stretched second position casting “X” shadows on the back wall… it was kinetically very exciting. (I wanted to witness more locomotion, but how does one MOVE in symmetry?)

Tonight I chatted with another Mailing Party volunteer about the show; he reminded of the right and left brain, and how moving in symmetric motion causes the two brains to do the same thing at the same time. He said that Scaroni had told him about how she felt she went into a trance after forcing her body to move in symmetry for extended periods of time. My brother was diagnosed with ADHD and he was encouraged to play lots of sports – the coordination of which I’m sure helped him to neurologically gain mental control.

If this post is a little scattered, it’s not because of a lack of asymmetry, it’s due to a late hour and a desire to get this blog going. Why not start with a musing on neurological and kinesthetic connections? Did you see the piece? What did YOU think?