There is the mystery (palpable) of a dance lived as a spiritual experience and the evidence of a just and beautiful gesture, perfectly tuned to the body that he interprets it.
This rare articulation of the soul (since it must be called so) and of the flesh, the choreographer Paco Dècina, passionate about Chinese medicine and oriental philosophies, offers magic with a puzzling simplicity: a kind of essence of dance, concentrated twenty years of acute explorations of movement right down to its most underground ramifications. But more than an artist of excellence, Paco Dècina is above all an accomplished, soothed being. Beyond the show, this Neapolitan left to become an engineer before turning out to be a dancer - claims a free art, porous interface between being and the world. Thus Letter to Silence (1998), a twirling solo, scratched with sharp angles, and Neti-Neti ("Neither this nor that", in Indian tradition), a soft and gnarled duo slipping into the heart of the male or female being, bear the imprint of this approach. The gestures are supple and sculptural, with a sumptuous work of hands and arms, nervous legs. On set, the dancers seem to be laden with a secret: that of life, matter and the desire never satisfied to transcend human destiny.
In search of a "white space", steeped in oriental thought, choreographer Paco Dècina presents Neti-Neti
Aden: Neti-Neti ("Neither this nor that"), your new creation is a duet that borrows its title from the Indian tradition. He refers, you say, to the denial of all name and form of which the world is made, in order to stand in the direction of the One." A little hard to follow, isn't it?
Paco Dècina : One always needs to be reassured by a possible understanding to fill a deep void. A duet is something that doesn't fall from the sky, it's a journey. I'm not smart, I'm intuitive. A title is important because, for me, it is the first step, the first organization in time and in the space of any work that is drafted. Something is bubbling in me, with a lot of energy. With the title, I don't know where I'm going yet, so I'm groping. I write texts, this is the beginning of dramaturgy. I write as the words come; then I have to get this in shape. I also choose some music on favorites; only then does the work with the interpreters begin. In any case, I remain convinced that I do not make the pieces. How it comes, I still don't know... I also realized that I had arrived at a point in my work when I was asked to justify myself, to enlighten, to give certainty. However, in my research, there is no answer.
We're very close to Eastern thinking!
Yes, because Eastern philosophy is more interested in the body. I try to create a width and a white space, unexplored in relation to our doubts. It is a postulate that is not only valid for dance, but for my whole life.
What is this "white space"?
It's the void, a space where anything is possible.
So what is the body?
Probably not just a set of tendons, muscles and organs. It is part of the form of our organization, of our relationship to the world. Thought is a body, so are affects. There is no difference between physical and psychic.
It must not be easy to find dancers in tune with such assumptions!
I work with people who, like me, question their lives and are getting closer to this family of thought. I work on the memory of the body, that is to say on the whole organization of the person and not just the body, conscious and individual. In my encounter with the performer, I intuitively feel whether body matter can resonate with me. I choose the dancers as a love story.
In the duet, Neti-Neti (“Not this, nor that”), the presence of Indian music suggests the sacred dimension of its dances, and there is an interesting connection. The balance is struck between the masculine and feminine elements. The slow, continuous movement is at the same time a persuasive force and a quest for peace. Whether the bodies are tracing the space separating them without preventing their dancing together, or clasped to each other and rolling on the ground, their dance is unified, they are one. The two dancers, Valeria Apicella and Paolo Rudelli, moving through their adagio with complete serenity, seem to give off a subtle fragrance, that which permeates a space when the flames of desire have cooled, when the only thing left is the shared secret.
The choreographer gives birth to a poetic movement where the movement unfolds here and then restarts there, in an infinite volatile vibration.
Urbuz : Dance manifests itself in a form of neutrality, before the stage of expressiveness, to what is due?
Paco Dècina : All this corresponds to Dance. Dance and muscle movement should not be confused. It is the triggered sensation that is crucial and for me it is worked in oblivion. Indeed, the creative work, the way to bring the encounter with the audience is special and each choreographer has a personal process of setting up this relationship in order to bring the performer and the audience into another space-time. Dance is of this order, completely inexplicable, it escapes everything. It is a movement of life. In reality, it is a question of seeing and above all of giving more space to the gaze. It is true that often the viewer (and I am one too) always seeks to recognize a movement. This relieves him of the profound reversal that the sensations associated with dance cause in him, because they are of the order of what knots, whether by watching or practicing dance. Agreeing not to understand where it's going seems difficult, but allows access to unique sensations. to want to understand too much, we end up closing the feeling to what is already known. It's the same when I work with the interpreters. The more I talk to them, the more I guide them by disrupting their practice, so I intervene as little as possible. So they have to let go of something of them to go beyond that. This requires total mutual trust.
Urbuz :In Neti-Neti, the presence of the performers never surpasses the dance, the spectators themselves are in the same instance, even if it is a work based on a form of essence of movement?
Paco Dècina : I am a choreographer, I try to work on emotions that emanate from the deepest of the performers. In my work, I follow my intuition, I open up the possibilities around a subject and I try to draw deep into the truth of each interpreter. I like to convey the essence of movement rather than form. It is a universal quality that allows the performing body to be directly connected to its own history. I always try to access the movement by its essence and never from the outside. Thus, everything is in the same flow and gradually the viewer also finds himself in the same state...
Urbuz :How did you work on the relationship to music in different forms?
Paco Dècina : Paco Dècina: Sometimes the music used in the show is used from rehearsals, so the dance is born at the same time, because it is worked with the music of the show constantly. This is the case for Tibetan songs. Sometimes the music comes after. There are also moments in rehearsals when I take the music off, when the whole thing becomes heavy and the dance can no longer develop. In reality, it is not me who creates, it is my interpreters, it is society at that time. I'm just a catalyst and even though the color of the look is mine, I don't know what it's from.
If it takes an inner certainty to exist, it seems that Paco Dècina has placed his own in the dance. Dancer of the immobile, as we could say of him, the choreographer reflects his dance on the side of contemplation. It is a work of passage that, step after step, asks to get out of the rumor of the world to make its nest in silence, surrender to space. Refining his gestures - made up of poses, postures, figures - which revisited Byzantine mosaics or Italian Renaissance painters with equal ease, Paco Décina gradually turned to abstraction. The subtle bodies that interest the choreographer now print into his work the effects of vibrations, transparency and compose with a gesture that is calligraphy. Since the poetic meditation on death that some have seen at the Theatre de la Ville in Ciro Esposito fu Vincenzo, a play created in 1993, his work has undergone more than one transformation. With a full, carnal, fluid dance, the choreographer achieves a simplicity that is pure. This is the first thing that touches the senses in Lettre to silence and Neti-Neti, a solo followed by a duet, stripped of all pageantry, listening to the only movement. In the first, Paco Dècina rereads in his own way the works of an Italian visual artist, Raffaele Biolchini, letters that appear in the form of terracotta tablets where the artist has engraved abstract signs. Standing in a ray of light, the choreographer moves slowly. As if he were talking to the invisible, his arms draw arcs, his body becomes a curve where gestures stretch their patterns. A series of secret hieroglyphics follows. In the silent text of this writing composed of traces where memory and imagination mingle, Paco Dècina maintains a mysterious dialogue with the sensitive world. The choreographer's duet Neti-Neti whose title is borrowed has a dialect of India. The term means "neither this nor that" The wisdom it contains, related to detachment, is inscribed at the heart of the work process and guides the writing of the piece. There, two performers, Valeria Apicella and Paolo Rudelli, engage with talent in the perilous exercise of a slow and continuous movement that constantly unfolds, untie, multiplying curves and interlacings. Precious without aesthetics, resolutely free in form, this song of the bodies towards silence takes place against a black background topped with light.
In search of a neutral space where tensions and oppositions unravel, Paco Dècina creates an architecture of bodies whose quality sacramentally pacifies hearts.
The clarity and harmony that transcend his choreography never cease to charm. A wonderful moment of the Choreographic Routes last week.
To the extent that an artist is known for his talent and his work of excellent quality, it is with interest that we like to find him.
Scheduled several times in Limoges as part of the Biennale Danse Émoi organized by the city's Cultural Centres, Paco Dècina presented two of his recent choreographies last Wednesday at the Théâtre de l'Union-CDNL: a solo, "Letter to Silence," performed by the choreographer and a duet, "Neti-Neti" (Neither this nor this) with Valeria Apicella and Paolo Rudelli. These two works are characterized by a very pure, very harmonious and elaborate choreography. The performers evolve on a bare stage and the light is discreet: just what it takes to highlight attitudes, movements, lines.
Paco Dècina's writing is both clear and serene.
Paco Décina was inspired - as he is tried - by the work of a plastic artist, in this case the Italian sculptor Raffaele Biolchini. The choreographer plunges the viewer clans into a mysterious and even mystical atmosphere. Paco Decina dancer, amazes by the exceptional mastery he shows.
In "Neti-Neti," the bodies of the two interpreted borders, merge; they are read almost constantly.
This evolution in every sense of the word is absolutely fascinating. Here again, this work requires interpretations, a perfect mastery achieved through an intense and sustained inner energy.
"I am at a stage of my research where I need to let escape all the words, projects and ideas built, to invent and project to the body a white space. A space dedicated to what is neither emotional nor psychological, free from desire and fear and listening to movement (...) The fluence of matter, the freedom of the joints, the tactility beyond the skin are the themes of this duo."
You have to know how to read choreographers before you even let their pieces speak. Like a preamble. For his latest creation Nèti Nèti (Neither this nor that) Paco Dècina delivers a duet, bathed in a very original musical atmosphere, bringing to a sacred reverie. Lights, sounds, fluidity of movement contribute to the evocation of the Aerian and liquid elements.
A new variation of the duo, the links that are forged between the two dancers escape caricature, revealing a singular way of being together. Renewal of contacts, of approach, of the distance between bodies, of the quest for the other, of his renunciation.
The two performers Valeria Apicella and Paolo Rudelli give life to a dance Surprisingly devoid of spectacular effects, pushing to the ultimate stripping, for a highlight of the sculptural body magnified by light. One can suddenly read, with an open body, without getting carried away by any disturbing emotion. Sobriety is not sluggish. It allows us to find ourselves at the heart of the essential, at the source of dance, of being there, in the magic of the body that moves in this Moving fragility, and to let go of this memory of the movement inscribed as a heritage in each of us.