Letters to my mum
Butoh Performance
Ecate
She looked death in the face of death. I held her warm, soft hand. Thus, for four days and nights, we accompanied each other. I read aloud the readings from Porphyry’s cavern. Then, at the threshold of the abyss, Hecate looked at me and I began to dance. Eight steps into the eternal, under a deep sky, holding four stars. On the horizon were three faces flying on a black dragon. It was the bride of the Sun and Moon approaching. Holding a flashlight in her hand, she said, “Immortal is the way to the deserts, fatal is the way to the sleepers. To celestial origins are luminous the games of appearances.” I felt an egg breaking open, new and fragile. Wild hair in the wind and a clear gaze.
When a loved one crosses life’s threshold, the whole world seems new. How is it possible to turn an experience of mourning into a dance? “Hecate” is a performance that stems from the pain of mourning and addresses eternity, with which Damiano Fina remembers his mother Maria Novella, who passed away prematurely in 2021. The performance was recorded at the spaces of Villa Godi Malinverni, an architectural design by Andrea Palladio from 1542.
Year
2022
Production
In memory of Maria Novella, my mom.
Performance: Damiano Fina
Location: Villa Godi Malinverni
Eight steps into eternity
Two things seem certain in our eyes today: we are born and we die. And this fate of humanity appears incontrovertible. Therefore, not subject to error. Yet, if we go to the root of these words (destiny, incontrovertible, error, appear) we will come to question that initial certainty for which we are wont to take for granted the meaning of being born and dying. However, to account for these statements it is necessary to open the doors of the Path of Day. If every gesture is eternal, different is the spectacle that is shown to the eyes of the dancer. It is not a matter of inventing new gestures, but of letting the gestures say what they have been saying since they were offered to the truth of being. This is also why it is worth dancing today.
These days I was sitting by your side, day and night, holding your hand, without the possibility of being able to speak words to you. Grasping at life with your whole self, it was not yet your time to go. You held on until a special day, as Porphyry’s readings accompanied us. Two doors are available to us, the sage suggested in the nymphs’ lair: the way of mortals and the way of the eternal. Thus, with wisdom, we have been accompanied from that moment to the present. Hovering between one dimension and another, with our family shattered by the events of difficult days, the knowledge remains firm today that there are plots that do not disappear into thin air. More than a memory, you are a trace in my face, in my gestures, in the sound of my words. In all this loneliness, in this holding up the world with no longer a safe harbor, in this huge chasm where from the everyday has disappeared any hint of your tangible presence, though I cannot smell your scent, though I cannot utter words with you, your spark remains behind my eyes. [continues reading Damiano’s letter to his mom].