DERMA
A CREATIVE DIARY
33 DAYS UNTIL PREMIERE
The days are as infinite as they are fleeing my hands.
I feel them arriving as meteors shot in my sleep and I watch them dissipate slowly, like drops of water dripping off a block of ice.
The body starts to crave the atmosphere and the movement. It is developing a symbiosis. To the point where it is painful to not dance, it is hard to stay still, or simply think about something else. Everything, - from the sound of the church bells outside the window, to the reassuring smell of coffee in the morning, the aching of the mind after a bad night of sleep, the restless gurgling of the drain - literally everything, has to do with this work.
It seems as though without it nothing would function. As if the entire balance of breath and desire that keeps us standing would depend on it. In fact it doesn’t. It is a projection, I am aware.
Yet somewhere between vertebras and hip bone, between arteries and the spongy lungs, I crave to feel this more.
The necessity of it for my body is the fuel I need.
It anesthetizes reality.
Killing its banality, forcing its existence the way a newborn does with his outrageous cry.
Avoiding screens is the hardest task. I need them to play music, to film and correct myself. To buy props and check emails, as well as the time, an eternal enemy. The digital realm kills instincts. The body has no room in there. Only a projection of it. Projections don’t dance.
32 DAYS UNTIL PREMIERE
My whole body aches.
Inside my bones and fascia, in every crevice of this carcass, I feel obsession creeping in. There is no pain in dancing, but in living: in sleeping and tying my shoes, in showering or simply getting out of bed. It is liberating.
And it is memory.
Only in dance does the body rest.
Or is that the only place it lives? Pushing hard against the imprisonment of bones and skin, avoiding the simple mortality of the day, the materiality of a fleeting moment. A dance carefully carved into the meanders of anatomy.
A dance remembered.
31 DAYS UNTIL PREMIERE
Today there was nothing to grasp from my mind.
A skull as empty as when it sits in a laboratory. I could almost hear the static noise of rest.
I gathered the echoes of my thoughts, their bright enthusiasm fading, and left.
I laid down so my cat could lie on me, carefully seeping through my desires to find nothing once again.
Evening comes early these days.
I rest.
30 DAYS UNTIL PREMIERE
Music is a dictator. I rebel against it with all my strength. Especially today. I spent five hours trying to kill Mozart in his sleep. That guy never gives up. The brutality and disrespect required are scandalous and fun. It takes all 43 muscles in this mask to react. Staying home all day can be alienating, but I end up finding a space that is like white noise, a limbo of existence where I can concentrate deeply. A placenta of the soul, perhaps. It could also just be another self-made cage.
There is exactly one month to go until the premiere, and that scares me to death in some way. I think it's not the audience I fear, but the loss of this time, the loss of the exclusivity that this work has been. It is mine alone. For the first time ever, no one, not even another dancer, musician, technician, or assistant, has shared the live experience of this work. Whatever it is. Whatever it feels like. It's somehow like the corpse hidden in the backyard, the skeleton in the closet, the rare bone that the dog has masterfully hidden and will never be found again.
I hide from the world as I strip myself bare.
It's a kind of torture.
It's a kind of adulation, a narcissism.
Only I know the therapy for this process; no one else will have pity for it, and that is right. I would even say that it is necessary, and I want nothing more than a ruthless audience, ready to kill me as I always kill myself when I do this. Do you perhaps distinguish art from the artist?
I challenge you to try now.
One month to succeed.
29 DAYS UNTIL PREMIERE
The body is a medium. Like stone or iron, like clay, canvas, or plastic. I try to overcome it, to fight the limits of my anatomy, and every day I push myself a little further. It's trivial, simple. But the body is not easy to tame. It has its own brain, its own vibrant soul. Today my body guided the creative act in a rather drastic way. In a way that rarely happens: with outrageous demands, with infinite pulsating energy and need—need is always pure tragedy. The body pushed and pulled until it hurt, it expanded its reach until the room was insufficient and my brain was no longer able to follow. What joy. More than half of the work is now done, and it continues to grow. I am amazed by the unreliability of the creative process. It is incredibly extraordinary how it always keeps me in suspense, never letting me understand how to proceed, reaching out my hands in the dark and experiencing the final satisfaction of finding something to hold on to, holding it tight, finding a way. Thank you, body, for asking more of me.
28 DAYS UNTIL PREMIERE
I work with memory so I question it. In fact I actually don’t trust it: I always film myself, afraid I would forget steps, mood or details. I keep track of anything, even the most unnecessary note might become useful with a different mindset, in a different mental state, and as I do this, as I neglect trust towards myself, I notice clearly that Rosalind Cartwright was right. Memory is a creative act. There is no such a thing as remembering something without tainting it with the emotions felt back then and, ultimately, the feelings of the now.
So memory is not just nostalgia. Probably it is also like holding a mirror in front of the person we are today. How do I react to that now? What does that say?
I can state clearly: I am more cruel than I was back then.
It is probably a good thing a bad one. Everything is always both. Yet I find in this cruelty also humor and that I enjoy. I can chop myself to pieces and laugh as I do so. Sounds like growth.
Maybe?
27 DAYS UNTIL PREMIERE
Today was a horrible day.
I was rhetorical, immature, superficial, and unfocused. I had no grip. Space seemed infinite and tiny, useless and rarefied—impossible to get any response from it. Even in my body there was a disarming silence.
I was deaf for a whole day.
Trivial and apathetic.
Insipid.
Despicable.
26 DAYS UNTIL PREMIERE
I am searching for Sprezzatura. In fact, I am captivated by it.
Making the difficult seem easy. It is actually a rule of dance, a constant. Yet I am even more attracted to, enthralled by, making the simple seem complex. Dressing, undressing, walking, standing still, repeating the same sequence over and over again.
Eliminating rhetoric, eliminating didactics, making everything antithesis and climax, prologue and epilogue in itself, question and answer— definitive affirmation and open finale of the now, of the here; its manifestation.
From today, I pursue the sprezzatura of pain, of trauma, and the vulgar, raw exposure of everyday life, of the known.
Forgetting how to walk, while reciting, with fierce certainty, an algebraic theorem.
The paradox of contemporaneity.
We know everything. We know nothing.
25 DAYS UNTIL PREMIERE
It always arrives unexpectedly, that moment of crazy exploits, of maniacal and exponential dedication. I don't believe in inspiration. I don't like to give in to certain romanticisms. I prefer to think that it's simply exasperation. The right dose, to be correct, of indifference and dependence. I don't exist without this moment, yet it is futile, it will die, indeed, it is already dead. Before I even realized it. There it goes, fading away.
Today that moment brought me back to myself. After freezing in a room too big to warm up quickly, I plunged into the incendiary madness of a frenetic and complex dance. The soul is exhausting.
24 DAYS UNTIL PREMIERE
I woke up to the news of the death of Ornella Vanoni. I was ridiculously devastated, the way a teenager is when they encounter their first disappointment. I let her music, her voice, her inexplicable tender power invade my ears for the whole day.
I also encountered a new room today. Bright, warm, and distant, separated from the life I know. It was a gentle and peaceful encounter, just like the day itself: bright and very cold, simple and short.
I still have to tame this new place to my energy, to my vision of the work. DERMA will be so dark, so narrow, that all this light seems to want to kill it, humiliate it. Perhaps it is a necessary cruelty to eviscerate its idealization. Turning on a neon light on the gash of a war victim, bringing one of those lamps that heat plates in a restaurant close to the body undergoing an autopsy. Paradox often produces emotion.
It's all extra fuel.
23 DAYS UNTIL PREMIERE
Today I rest.
I don’t want to be a choreographer today. Nor a performer.
I don’t want to identify with the work, with my effort, with the research.
Today I just want to be human.
Forget my name.
Forget my heritage, my background, my origins.
Today I just want to be alive.
Simply.
Grotesquely.
Vaguely.
Absurdly and unapologetically.
Alive.
22 DAYS UNTIL PREMIERE
Because the past tense is always longer*
Because time is a mother*
Because this body is my last address*
Because time is a motherfucker*
Because the past tense is always longer*
Because time is a mother*
Because this body is my last address*
Because time is a motherfucker*
Because the past tense is always longer*
Because time is a mother*
Because this body is my last address*
Because time is a motherfucker*
Because the past tense is always longer*
Because time is a mother*
Because this body is my last address*
Because time is a motherfucker*
Because the past tense is always longer*
Because time is a mother*
Because this body is my last address*
Because time is a motherfucker*
Because the past tense is always longer*
Because time is a mother*
Because this body is my last address*
Because time is a motherfucker*
*Ocean Vuong
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21 DAYS UNTIL PREMIERE
Breaking it down, I notice linearity, I notice a certain storytelling approach and a logic interplay of scenes. I must destroy that. I will chop it into pieces and rebuild anew. Like a collage of the subconscious. I will feed it to the violence of memory: never linear, never retraceable except with difficulty, trudging along, linking days to people, smells to seasons, indescribable sensations to precise actions, concrete moments that have already vanished. I don't want the audience to be able to go home and retrace the plot of the performance in their minds. I don't want it to be trivially understandable. What a horrible word.
Art must carve an indelible mark in the mind. Even deeper.
Art is the branding of the soul.
A universal tool for calculating the passage of time.
There is a before and after the Mona Lisa, a before and after Guernica, a before and after Munch's The Scream, a before and after Mozart's Requiem, a before and after Stravinsky.
It is egocentric to compare oneself to all this.
Yet to climb the mountain, one must look at the summit, otherwise one remains where one is.
20 DAYS UNTIL PREMIERE
I remember too little to say I have a good memory. At least from my childhood, I am left with only a few scattered moments, like the last bits of confetti on the ground, impossible to vacuum up. Fleeting and utterly useless moments. On the other hand, I clearly remember how I felt in one situation or another, and often, inexplicably, I find myself plunging into that state of mind. Without it having any connection to the present. It's like falling, immediately. Like the first twinge of a headache, like realizing you're insomniac: you've been for a long time, yet suddenly you are completely so.
I currently chase various states like this. Myriads of sensations compressed into a mere thirty minutes. A bomb, basically. At least for me, it will be like inflicting capital punishment on myself, like flagellating myself on the streets.
So where is the point in doing it? Where is the pleasure? Where is the ultimate and central meaning, the real reason why it is worth forcing an audience to watch this exposé of narcissism?
I chase sensations, not events.
Not the story, but its origin and its end.
My body is the medium and the development.
I chase the universal desire to come to terms with the past, which today more than ever chases us, showing us, at every turn, its furiously crippled grimace. It sneers, it returns, like fashion, even delirium, oppression.
19 DAYS UNTIL PREMIERE
dermis
n. [from Greek δέρμα -ατος “skin”]
In anatomy, the deep layer of the skin or cutis of vertebrates, consisting mainly of bundles of connective tissue interwoven in various ways and elastic fibers, rich in vessels, nerves, smooth muscle fibers, etc.; its thickness varies greatly among different classes, and it has characteristic protrusions or papillae projecting toward the epidermis, while in the innermost layer (tunica dermis) the hair follicles and sweat and sebaceous glands are deepened.
*Dizionario Treccani
18 DAYS UNTIL PREMIERE
Something that never happened to me before is happening now. The work, somehow, is both finished and infinite. As of today, I have panned out the entirety of its dramaturgy, its flow of scenes: I have disected and reattached it - much like Guillermo del Toro’s Frankenstein - and made it into a new, raw and articulated living thing. It feels slowly beyond my control, growing its own consciousness, making choices and evolving.
At the same time, It feels utterly undone, unprepared, like a box of matches heated up but never lit - and it feels as if I am gaslighting myself into thinking its done: I mean look at it!, it’s there! this goes there and that goes here, I move over there and then I come here for this, at that accent this at that silence that, this, that, this, that.
Dance is nothing.
Probably that’s why.
Dance doesn’t exist.
I leave the studio exhausted and return the next day to find nothing.
The work is me. Inside myself are the steps and the intention, the motivation behind it and ultimate judge, the fearless executioner, ready to cut this, kill that, this, that.
So in the end I am carving my skin - differently than Guillermo del Toro’s Frankenstein - I am my own “creature”.
This, I have never done before. Open heart surgery on myself.
What a thrill.
17 DAYS UNTIL PREMIERE
Today I questioned a fundamental part of the ending. This process, so visceral and layered, is proving to be highly educational. I am constantly ready to break down and rebuild, to dispel the myth in order to elect a new idol. The judgment of others still overwhelms me. It is not so much the public that I fear, but those around me, those I love and those closest to me. I live in fear of disappointing them. But even more fearsome is myself. My favorite executioner. Here I am. I confess. Fortunately, like a bolt from the blue, there always comes a phrase that leads to an opening, piercing the crust of form and construction—not only to let the blood out but to let the light in, to give comfort. (How much masochism in these pages, how much victimization. I don't want to cure the source of these pathologies. I am an artist for a reason. I need my instability.) I was saying that these phrases always help to put my work into perspective and remind me that in the end it doesn't matter.
Some people suffer from these phrases, but I feel liberated, like a monarch butterfly diving into my senseless but coherent path.
Whether you land or crash, the important thing is to have taken off.
16 DAYS UNTIL PREMIERE
It is difficult to keep up with rest. I force myself into it. At times I would prefer the days to flip on themselves, not caring whether it’s day or night, whether anything is supposed to happen now or later.
I don’t believe in inspiration, I have said it before, but resonance is true.
I recharge my batteries. The cold pushes inwards.
15 DAYS UNTIL PREMIERE
The first run-through of the piece was a bumpy ride. It felt, all of a sudden, as if there isn’t much there, as if I hadn’t made any of it. This often is a good sign: there are no steps or combinations, but scenes, sensations, and the reaction they provoke. Nevertheless I felt terrible. My body escapes me. It is hard to be truly there and yet be the eyes watching as well. I need to shut off my maker’s brain.
Maybe it’s better to switch it inward: let the dancer make something out of it. I don’t need to spoon feed myself, I can push the boundaries of how I understand movement, how I project a feeling.
Slowly disintegrating itself, the shell of the work thins out and I can see its wounds. Some of them are worth seeing, others need mending.
14 DAYS UNTIL PREMIERE
Tuesdays are worse than mondays. They are filled with the obsessive need of productivity, whereas mondays are just filled with survival instincts. Between meetings and teaching duties there wasn’t much time for DERMA today.
I start becoming restless. There is a lot to do, I am the only one doing all.
13 DAYS UNTIL PREMIERE
Carefully rewatching, recomposing, eviscerating and reinventing myself. It is an addicting activity: there is always another patch to turn upside-down, another corner to smoothen. I spend the evenings painting carton boxes, transforming them, and the days doing the same to myself.
Every moment spent in crevices of the work makes it better. I understand it more - the way it thinks and behaves, the way it flows from a patch to the other, following the seem I can tell the erratic flow of emotions, it makes sense, it is intrinsic, it is true, like dust under a carpet, it is there, I can’t deny it.
The trick is to not polish it too much, to keep the mystery.
If it blatantly explains itself, if it belongs to thought, then it is just food for application’s texts, politicians talk, artistic garbage. It needs to live under the skin, like its title.
I work, I work, I work, I work, I work, I work, I work.
12 DAYS UNTIL PREMIERE
I remember a corner in the sky, where I’d stay waiting for you.*
*Leo Chiosso
11 DAYS UNTIL PREMIERE