A dance-piece with clay
By Helga Arnalds and Matteo Fargion
The systems all around us and inside us, like the heartbeat, breathing, splitting of the cells, the rhythm of the day, the rhythm of nature, the habit of waking up, brushing our teeth, and having coffee, all of these repetitions are the triggers for the performance The body is a bowl and especially when the rhythm in these systems goes out of balance. This can be when we lose a loved one, our health, or a volcanic eruption breaks out in our backyard. Something happens that shakes the ground from under our feet and changes everything that follows. Everything we have felt given is not what it was. Summer no longer comes after spring. The body's cells lose their rhythm and go into overdrive. Being alive is not a given anymore. Yet in this uncertainty, something completely new is born.
My body is a bowl abstractly addresses the subject in a non-linear narrative, expressing physical experience through clay and rhythm.
The 10 Fingers have for years specialized in performances on the border of theater and visual art. The group worked with different materials in their previous performances, such as paper, plastic, or soil, studying their nature and how to give them life on stage through movement and body language. In the performance My Body is a Bowl, the group is working with clay. This time mixing its methods with the methodology of stage artist and composer Matteo Fargion, who brings certain formulas from music composition and transfers them to movement and choreography which fits very well with the working methods of 10 fingers. My Body is a Bowl is a performance for adults, unlike most of the group's previous works
Everything we feel, think, and say we experience in the body. The body remembers everything. It is the bowl that holds all that we are and perceive.
Artistic crew :
Authors: Helga Arnalds and Matteo Fargion,
Co-authors: Eva Signý Berger and Valgerður Rúnarsdóttir
Direction and choreography: Matteo Fargion & Helga Arnalds
Text: Helga Arnalds, Vala Rúnarsdóttir og Eva Signý Berger
Performers: Helga Arnalds and Valgerður Rúnarsdóttir
Set and costume design: Eva Signý Berger and Helga Arnalds
Choreographer: Matteo Fargion in collaboration with Helga Arnalds and Valgerður Rúnarsdóttir
Videos: Eva Signý Berger and Helga Arnalds
Music: Matteo Fargion
Songs: Francesca Fargion
Light design: Ólafur Ágúst Stefánsson
Production: 10 Fingers and MurMur Productions; Ragnheiður Maísól Sturludóttir and Kara Hergils
Photo for poster: Margret Seema Takyar
Pictures from the performance: Björgvin Sigurðarson
Graphic design: Úlfur Arnalds
Bowls: Helga Arnalds, Eva Signý Berger and Valgerður Rúnarsdóttir
My Body is a Bowl is funded by Performing Arts Fund, Artists' Salary Fund and Reykjavík Cultural Fund.
"Wonderful show - true, sincere and clear." Vigdís Jakobsdóttir, the former director of the Reykjavik Art Festival.
"Beautiful and strong work. I was impressed." Jóna Hlíf Halldórsdóttir, the President of the Association of Icelandic Artists.
"The performance My Body is a Bowl is about what is closest to us and will be neither true nor false, it just is. The question is how we knead the clay. The cells of the body, the heartbeat, the breathing, the cycle of creation and the rhythm of each person's life is addressed. It can come like a thunder out of the blue if this regular rhythm is interrupted. And what happens then? Of course, an infinite number of things happen in every person's life if and when they experience trauma. Then the body's cells can lose their rhythm and go into overdrive…. The chaos can be insurmountable, it seems. But even in those conditions something new can be born. If we manage to knead the clay or wear it on our chest and back like Helga and Valgerður do at certain moments in the performance....
Art practiced with diligence, insight, skill, and endurance and through artistic research improves life and relieves the burden of the body. Art can light torches in the threatening wilderness of the mind, which sometimes does not provide enough light to prevent the cells of the body from finally melting away from constant overturning. There, the contribution of 10 fingers and all the artists participating in making My Body is a bowl - a dance piece with clay, is important. This is a performance on the border of theater and visual art, or perhaps a performance that combines different art forms under the banner of visual arts. This work is for the sake of beauty and truth, an important message to individuals and society alike."
Trausti Ólafsson - Víðsjá RÚV - Icelandic National Broadcasting Service.
FRANCESCA'S SONGS
Nobody here at the end of the day
Nobody here at the end of the day
Just the cold and the weight of the clay
It pushes me back I hold it and sink
My arms spread open like eagles wings
I let go and drift, in the stillness
Gentle, firm, I feel you condense
It’s like breathing in, it’s like breathing out
I run in circles but you hold me down
Like a hand on my chest, a sigh in my ear
You swallow me whole if I come to near
You are like a cloud, unwieldy and stout
No shape no surface no way to get out
And when I stop, I feel your embrace
With no direction I move in your space
Sometimes I stop and feel
Sometimes I stop and feel
This is not quite as it should be
I’ve forgotten myself
I’m in a hole
So fertile and gold
Sometimes I stop and feel
A void is between us
A separation
I’m on the opposite pole
And I’ve no one to hold
Sometimes I stop and search
My dreams for the answers
But I am floating without moving
I’m in a maze
And I can’t find my way
Sometimes I stop and see
A series of unformed images
But if there’s enough time
Maybe I’ll find
A systematic study of the human kind
In my unconscious mind
And soon it will be time
And soon it will be time to go through the fire
And after that it won’t change
No, it will never change it will be stuck this way
Forever in the same shape
And after years cracks might start to show
And when it has stiffened and cooled
They will start to spread and we will see instead
The beginnings of the ending
Oh, we think and we feel but we must grow old
Of softness and yielding we let go
It will break or burn never to return
Quiet, tired, fading
Your rhythm helps me
Your rhythm helps me to find my flow
Your heart beat light, tender sweet and slow
The beat may change but our dance will still find it’s way
We’re moving together in space
Evolving slowly over centuries
We rest so steady in the resting beat
Patterns form on the outside slowly we sink
Blurry and I distinct
I might prefer swimming in the spring
Is that my rhythm, something I should sing?
Winter’s ending but summer’s not yet begun
So we bow to the warming sun
Eternal languages murmuring
Are they learned or a discovery
The air is warmed on the exhale by my body
A cycle of energy
Oh it’s a good feeling
Oh it’s a good feeling
It’s a very very good feeling
It reminds us of our childhood
Those happy memories
Playfulness and creativity
So flexible and free
Oh anything would come from nothing
A kitchen or a tree
We’d stop, observe and just feel it
We’d let it lead the way
Oh we were lost in our laurels
Head in hands
My Body is a Bowl
My body is a bowl
It gathers me together
Round alive and murky
Always in your hold
My palms are stacked so high
Like another’s plate of food
Eyes and ears and navel
Fear and fortitude
My body is a bowl
it holds me in so near
Angry and uncertain
Every line is clear
Thoughts gathering in my mind
Anger, love and sorrow
My heart, my womb, my veins
You carry my remains