There is the palpable mystery of dance experienced spiritually, as well as the weight of a balanced, beautiful movement in perfect harmony with the body making it.
In this rare expression of the soul (yes, the soul) and the flesh, the choreographer Paco Dècina, a living repository of Chinese medicine and Oriental philosophies, brings us magic with an unnerving simplicity, presenting the essence of dance, a concentrated blend of twenty years of intense research into the farthest depths of movement and its origins. He is more than a technician, he is a man of fulfilment and accomplishment. This Neapolitan who started out as an engineer before becoming a dancer, is looking for free art, a porous interface between human beings and the world. Lettre au silence (1998), is a swirling solo sliced by sharp angles.
(…) Paco Dècina no longer has any doubts about his dancing. In his solo Lettre au silence, he shows us the works of the sculptor Raffaele Biolchini, using clay tablets upon which the artist has engraved abstract symbols. The choreographer does the same thing with his body, using his own secret choreographic alphabet as elements of a singular and beautiful calligraphy.
The secret of femininity. Constantly reaching, suspending, the dance is composed of small motifs, embroidered gestures with which his virile male body invokes a feminine secrecy in his choice of arm and hand movements neither copied nor transposed. We are nonetheless struck by the abstract similarity to Indian mudras (symbolic gestures used in Indian dance), although they are not employed here in a literal sense.
(…)In Lettre au silence, Paco Dècina presents the works of sculptor Raffaele Biolchini in the form of clay tablets upon which the artist has engraved certain abstract symbols. Standing still in a column of light, the choreographer advances, moving his arms and curving this way and that, as if speaking to the void, to someone invisible. We see a series of hieroglyphics, a mute speech in which we find traces of things remembered, things imagined, a dialogue of perception between Paco Dècina and the world.
Paco Dècina offers a kind of gesture psalmody in response to Indian music, form without return, like two long sentences without successive. Reference to an unlikely writing, this solo is also a reflection on discursive logic, Indian dance. Orant or dancer, Paco Dècina excels in the intimate exercise of the solo.