Ephemeral Body

“Ephemeral Body” is an autobiographical dance performance that outlines a journey of recovery and the quest for the body identity of the performer, who experiences now, as a dancer and a choreographer, mobility impairments.

Using the concept of her folded stage object as a metaphor for the bodily changes she experiences, the performer unfolds aspects and fragments of her personal experience with disability through her relationship and living history with a folded object she had been associated with in the past.

Penetrating the materiality of the object, she elicits memories by transforming the object into live moving images punctuated by moments and experiences.

Therefore, the matter-as-fold acquires a form through the inner world of the performer and becomes the ground for the unfolding of her psychic world, as mentioned by Gilles Deleuze in his book on the fold.

Employing the material object as a carrier of memories and emotions, as well as a building material, the body constructs, fuses, develops, and re-creates spaces where dipoles such as “movement – stasis,” “human – non-human” coexist and converse, calling through fragments another life to resurface, while at the same time, redefining its very self.

“Ephemeral Body” by Valasia Simeon qualified through the Open Call Onassis Future N.O.W. 2022