PROJECT

Investigating the themes of loss, of transformations, and of the relationship between bodies and landscapes, DOM- has now begun to construct rituals of passage through those places that are undergoing transformation, involving as much as possible the various forms of inhabitants – plants, animals and humans – that populate them. The desire is to re-actualize the ritual in contemporary language, looking at dance and theatre as one of the secular legacies of collective rituals – according to the vision of the cultural anthropologist Victor Turner -, and to investigate how these arts are able to generate a process of subtle transformation in the participants/witnesses of the ritual. The Turnerian concept of communitas, of flow, and the three phases of the ritual (separation, transition or liminality, reintegration) are currently the field of study of DOM-

The liminal phase, in particular, will be detected as the object of the research during a two-week residency at the wpZimmer’s artistic workplace in Antwerp, at the end of which the work done will be shared with an open workshop of three days.

The liminal phase is the central part of the rites of passage. It deals with transformation, that moment of intensity and abyss in which all the rules and structures of the common-life are subverted. This order precipitates into a state of loss and annulment. The engagement of the body has a fundamental role in this part.

In these three days of workshop we will try to explore, sharing the research together, the postural and physical characteristics of the liminal phase. The wish is to gather words and practices so to understand how to build a field of forces that can allow abandonment, dis-identification, the loss of the concept of “I” until the appearance of “myself as a place where something is going on”, narrowing the margin between inside and outside.

Dance is this possibility of inhabiting the anti-structure.