(re)formulating dance (2023 – present)
Description of the Research
For Lucía Inés – math teacher and my mom – who from her fascination for numbers and equations always tries to dance with me. With the wish that these practices continue to bring our worlds closer.
C.na^ + (f/ff/f) + (. >x<) + (o /∞) + (m + a + e - (a - e)) = Malena's first formula.
C = cut, na = nails, ^ = flush, f = finger, f = flower, x = body, <>>< = lateralize, o = bun, ∞ = ass, / = ballet barre, m = Malena, a = Albarracin, e = El Mankabadi.
Cutting nails flush + threading flowers + Lateralizing + being behind Sofia Corradini at the ballet barre at age 11 + taking off her last name = c o r e o g r a p h i c a t i o n .
“(re)formulating dance” is a research-gualicho (spell in Argentine) in which I dedicate myself to transfer experiences in dance contexts to mathematical formulas that I then compile into movement scores. It is a living archive that (un)weaves stories, with a gender perspective, relationships with teachers and partners, practices, ways of saying and steps that have allowed me to dance and have a life on the margins of normativity. This research allows me not only to reconstruct and collect moments but also to celebrate, repair and reformulate them through the body.
Choreographies, in this framework, become tools of reconciliation that allow to revive and reconfigure the past, activating new forms of movement and thought. The research is sustained by references such as the concept of “queering damage” by The Underground Division (Helen Pritchard, Jara Rocha, Femke Snelting), which invites to rethink normative damage and explore new forms of artistic and political existence. It also draws on Édouard Glissant's notion of the “right to opacity”, claiming the value of difference and complexity, allowing bodily experiences in dance to exist without the need to explain or justify themselves to a normative gaze.
In addition to working with movement scores, another central practice in this research is the manual writing of formulas on different types of paper with pencil. We are looking for paper that, when erasing the writing, leaves the trace of the stroke and, at the same time, can be rolled up. This exploration is not only material, but also corporal: the textures of the paper are printed on the body and transform the gestures. Back to writing by hand is also an investigation into the relationship between the body, memory and writing: how we hold the pencil, how we write with our whole body on rolls of one meter high and how these primary gestures, when amplified, affect and transform our bodies.
This project has been developed in several instances, including the APDCV's Arrelant 2023 Residency and the IVAM Articulacions 23-24 study program. It is currently supported by Espai La Granja for rehearsals and will have its first process opening at La Mutant's Zona Grisa on April 23rd, 2025.
