Adentro! is the result of a commission for a contemporary work inspired by Argentina’s folk dances. What appealed to you about this offer?

My work always begins with the physical body, which is a rich source of information and a site of knowledge. I ask it questions as if it were an oracle, starting with minimalist gestures, sensations, and perceptions. I became interested in the inner body of Argentinian folk dances. Since puffed-out chests are one of their key features, I first asked the performers to very slowly open up their sternums as far as possible. I soon saw how that gesture embodies the gaucho, dominance, and colonialism. It was illuminating to see how such a small change in the body can evoke so many things and express so many collective stories. Then I discovered the video that opens the show, in which a kid dances a simple, beautiful, and authentic folk dance. Those were the two things that made up my mind to accept the offer.

We started to collect kinetic data by studying tutorials, manuals, and videos and speaking with a specialized dancer, who provided a more in-depth understanding. I didn’t choose specific dances but instead appropriated elements that recur in various folk dances. The idea was to explore what the body does when performing this kind of dance and, in a sense, deconstruct this traditional knowledge. It’s often said that traditional dances embody the soul of a people.

You have mentioned the notion of the “people’s body.” These dances were created in the 20^th century to preserve Argentina’s national identity in response to a wave of immigration that included your own family. What have you found in them besides machismo?

My family are Polish Jews, and the patterns of the Jewish folk dances I learned at private school are very different from the dances taught in Argentina’s public system. And while the Latin influence on my education and life is very strong, when I saw Pina Bausch at the age of 15, I felt something stirring in my DNA, almost like a blood connection. I can’t deny my link to Europe. Different cultures co-exist in me and in my work.

In terms of the Argentinian body, torsos that impose themselves in a space, immediately creating a sense of confrontation, are very typical of our folk dances. They have a patriarchal and disciplinary character. They convey more information about male than female bodies. When the dances were created in the 1920s and ‘30s, this affirmation of identity was intended first and foremost for gauchos, men from the countryside. These dances are also very binary. In the few that are reserved for women, everything is light, fluid, and lithe. Today, women and men dance these roles indiscriminately. In Adentro!, we wanted to mix things up by decking out the woman in a beard then removing it from her. We pursued a hybrid approach that contains many elements of folk dance but is something else.

It may not be folk dance, but there is a powerful sense of Argentina in the piece. How do you explain that?

We took elements from the folk tradition without combining them in the usual ways. What’s beautiful about this is that it evokes images of the pampas, wind, horses, other animals, and various other elements that no doubt inspired the dances. These are freed of their symbolic weight, but they nevertheless convey information that ends up refreshing the dance with new symbolism. The musical work with Axel Krygier, who I was paired with at the start, followed the same process as the physical work. He incorporates a lot of folk elements into his music and combines them with very different sounds in his compositions.

Let’s go back to the idea of asking the body questions as if it were an oracle. What responses have you already received? And has it helped shape your worldview?

First of all, I would say that you can ask any kind of questions and the body will always give you an answer. I would also say it taught me that very minimalist gestures can take you to very beautiful and rewarding places. By combining exploration of the body and of space, dance offers the possibility of seeing the world at its simplest and most essential, giving you basic political and sociological insights.

That absolutely transformed how I view the world. For example, I can say that dance has made me more of a feminist. The perspective of dance, which allows me to feel present in my body, positions me as a woman in the world through my perceptions, sensibilities, and care. This subtle approach, this attitude of attentiveness to the minimal, lets me see and understand things that I wouldn’t see in situations where it’s easy to change the subject and lose a lot of information. If I use a degree of improvisation in most of my works, it’s to ensure they remain dynamic and continue putting this mighty oracle into action.

Interview by Fabienne Cabado

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