The body of the letter: resistance and camouflage

Instructions for meeting clandestinely, making false calls, making and distributing propaganda, making and installing bombs are part of an instruction for resistance to the dictatorship that the MIR created in 1975. The body of the letter is based on that text and on testimonies, a work of contemporary dance and visual arts directed by Paulina Mellado and Verónica Troncoso.

The montage was created from an investigation by Troncoso on clandestine texts during the dictatorship. With that file five dancers worked under the direction of Mellado. “The material is sometimes absolutely heartbreaking and the question that appears there is how to talk about that horror from our corporeality,” says the choreographer.

On stage, some of the texts are projected onto the bodies of the dancers, fragments of testimonies are heard and you can see the record of interventions that the performers carried out in the city, such as on a corner where a MIR militant was killed. This is how, for Troncoso, the dialogue between the visual arts and dance occurs: “In the contamination of both creation processes and the inclusion of visual and conceptual materials to the scene.”

Interpreters Javiera Cáceres, Camila Delgado, Katherine Leyton, Katya Noriega and Daniella Santibañez
Sound design José Miguel Miranda
Lighting and set design José Antonio Palma
Production Mariángela Ortíz
Photographs Diego Figueroa