After 23 years, and with most of its original cast, this legendary work that marked a milestone in the 90s and launched the career of the dancer, choreographer and director Paulina Mellado is re-released.
If man expresses his ideas and thoughts through words, the body does so through its fluids. It is his own way of speaking that drips from the inside to the outside, leaving a stain, a trace, an imprint.
This thesis by the Chilean poet Ronald Kay (Pina Bausch's husband) influenced the process of creating the Paulina Mellado Company to translate and choreographically work on this phenomenon in The Body That Stains.
Premiered in 1992, this production was Paulina Mellado's first group work and today it is presented again at GAM after two decades with three of the five dancers from the original cast.
The text talks about how the organism shows its interiority through secretions. Blood, sweat, semen and tears, all evacuations that the body releases to express itself and that leave a stain like the ink of that body writing.
The company takes this idea and places emphasis on the dancers' footprints, which are dyed with colored powder to leave footprints. The costumes are made with layers of different tones that appear according to the movements and in the scene there are buckets of water that leave the floor stained.
In this way, the five dancers display their corporality depending on the dust, the color, the use of fabrics and the movements.
For Paulina Mellado, the importance of tracing this work lies in how significant memory is for life in society: "Chile has problems with the issue of memory. I think this instance has to do with that need not to forget, to account for a reality that was a past, but that forges the present. There we are in debt to ourselves" and highlights "Although today they are not the same bodies and the same things are not danced, we have in our favor the experience of so many years accumulated by each of the interpreters.”
With this work, the young dancer questioned the traditional principles of technique and described her work as subversive dance. From there, he installs the body and its relationships as the engine of his creation, a characteristic that he has maintained to this day.
"It is important to let in the memory of the 80s and 90s as part of a history that needs to be remembered. I think it is interesting to recognize where we come from and what our little history is. In the 90s something very interesting happens in dance and its languages. There was a need to do and dance, a very convincing mix when it came to creating our choreographies. We were young and from a post-dictatorship culture in which we knew that if we did not make an effort nothing would happen," adds the choreographer.
The work is part of the "Choreographic Heritage" program, of the Dance Area of the Culture Council. This initiative aims to highlight national creation and will trace other emblematic works in the history of dance.
They are pieces that have stood out for contributing to the development of languages, imaginaries and scenic discourses and reviving them will give greater visibility to the Chilean choreographic heritage.
In this first version, GAM will also host the piece Sótano (1993) by Luis Eduardo Araneda in December. Likewise, Los Ruegos de la Compañía Movimiento will be presented in November at the Maule Regional Theater.
Direction: Paulina Mellado
Assistant director: Andrea Torrejón
Performers Verónica Canales, Carolina Cifras, Marcela Retamales, Paulina Mellado and Macarena Pastor
Design Sound José Miguel Miranda
Lighting and set design José Antonio Palma
Producer Mariángela Ortiz
This thesis by the Chilean poet Ronald Kay (Pina Bausch's husband) influenced the process of creating the Paulina Mellado Company to translate and choreographically work on this phenomenon in The Body That Stains.
Premiered in 1992, this production was Paulina Mellado's first group work and today it is presented again at GAM after two decades with three of the five dancers from the original cast.
The text talks about how the organism shows its interiority through secretions. Blood, sweat, semen and tears, all evacuations that the body releases to express itself and that leave a stain like the ink of that body writing.
The company takes this idea and places emphasis on the dancers' footprints, which are dyed with colored powder to leave footprints. The costumes are made with layers of different tones that appear according to the movements and in the scene there are buckets of water that leave the floor stained.
In this way, the five dancers display their corporality depending on the dust, the color, the use of fabrics and the movements.
For Paulina Mellado, the importance of tracing this work lies in how significant memory is for life in society: "Chile has problems with the issue of memory. I think this instance has to do with that need not to forget, to account for a reality that was a past, but that forges the present. There we are in debt to ourselves" and highlights "Although today they are not the same bodies and the same things are not danced, we have in our favor the experience of so many years accumulated by each of the interpreters.”
With this work, the young dancer questioned the traditional principles of technique and described her work as subversive dance. From there, he installs the body and its relationships as the engine of his creation, a characteristic that he has maintained to this day.
"It is important to let in the memory of the 80s and 90s as part of a history that needs to be remembered. I think it is interesting to recognize where we come from and what our little history is. In the 90s something very interesting happens in dance and its languages. There was a need to do and dance, a very convincing mix when it came to creating our choreographies. We were young and from a post-dictatorship culture in which we knew that if we did not make an effort nothing would happen," adds the choreographer.
The work is part of the "Choreographic Heritage" program, of the Dance Area of the Culture Council. This initiative aims to highlight national creation and will trace other emblematic works in the history of dance.
They are pieces that have stood out for contributing to the development of languages, imaginaries and scenic discourses and reviving them will give greater visibility to the Chilean choreographic heritage.
In this first version, GAM will also host the piece Sótano (1993) by Luis Eduardo Araneda in December. Likewise, Los Ruegos de la Compañía Movimiento will be presented in November at the Maule Regional Theater.
Direction: Paulina Mellado
Assistant director: Andrea Torrejón
Performers Verónica Canales, Carolina Cifras, Marcela Retamales, Paulina Mellado and Macarena Pastor
Design Sound José Miguel Miranda
Lighting and set design José Antonio Palma
Producer Mariángela Ortiz
