Bitter Pineapples
Screening and Conversation
Film and performance by Anna Cady and Gabriel Galvez-Prado
‘My land / my house / my grand mother / her food / myself waiting for her / my brother - recriminations / my homosexuality / a river of blood…’ … just a few of the words that Mexican dancer Gabriel Galvez-Prado uses to describe his feelings for Mexico. This work is the result of an intensive collaboration between Gabriel and artist film maker Anna Cady. Together they have endeavoured to convey the role dance has played for Gabriel in coming to terms with trauma. In the first section of the film, Gabriel’s Dance, Gabriel tries to make sense of his memories. He (and his shadow) dance in front of a projection of stills and ‘found’ video footage - of himself, dancing in his aunt’s house in Mexico some years ago. The narration wanders through memories, which are at times of a normal happy childhood but increasingly reveal a world of violence and death… This year, Anita, Gabriel’s mother, spent three months with him in the UK where the second part of this film Anita’s Dance was shot - in his home in Southampton. It is about silence. The silence which protects them from facing up to discussing the violence and abuse they have experienced and the freedom dance gives them to overcome fear. Anna: ‘Over the past years I have commissioned Gabriel to dance in relation to my film installations and this is the first in a series of collaborative experiments in film and dance which are led by Gabriel’s life experience. It has been important to us that we made a film about the repercussions of violence and the abuse of power, whilst revealing the therapeutic value of both film and dance. Roland Barthes spoke of the need to describe interiority without disclosing privacy. I’m not sure we have achieved that, but it has been a guiding principle in making the work.’ Gabriel is trained in Butoh and Somatic dance techniques, both of which enable one to express one’s deeper, even unconscious, feelings through movement. Combining this line of creativity with film – where the process is generally much more prescriptive – has been an exciting challenge. Gabriel lives and works in Southampton, where, as well as performing and teaching he holds movement classes for older people and those with Parkinsons disease. Anna Cady has screened and installed films both nationally and internationally - including Tate Modern. Her animated documentary 30% (Women and Politics in Sierra Leone) won Best Film award at Southampton Film Week and went on to be selected for the Sundance Film Festival in 2013, and a Vimeo ‘Staff Pick’. Installations of her work include Mottisfont (NT), and more recently at Tremenheere Sculpture Park within the James Turrell Skyspace. |
Thursday 1 November 2018
7.30pm City Eye and John Hansard Gallery Studio 144 142 - 144 Above Bar Street Southampton SO14 7DU Presented by City Eye in partnership with John Hansard Gallery as part of Mexico Week.
If you would like to make a donation to City Eye so that it is able to continue its work supporting artists like Anna and Gabriel and enabling opportunities such as this to experience exceptional work there will be the opportunity at this event - or please contact [email protected] to discuss how you might donate.
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