It is the story of a body that metamorphoses, moved by a fantastic, vital energy and shows in a new relationship with the world, both at the choreographic and social levels. This relationship with the world comes from the conjunction of many structuring factors: the environment, the mastering of know-how, the imagination, economic conditions, the time factor, and above all a holistic approach to the world. It is a field where the semantics of the body, and its implicit prerequisites are naturally bred.
The women potters of Sejnane are permanently in their environment; here it is not a matter of choice. All they can do is to work on the link between themselves and the earth. Their bodies are the instrument of their daily tasks and their know-how, worked on by their life conditions and their environment. Their art is related to the deepest roots of every individual. Their know-how is rich in small gestures that are issued out of the macrocosm.
In this aesthetic field, the body workshop is held every morning with the participation of the women potters of Sejnane to make imagination come out of their bodies and make them intelligible. These repetitive gestures used to mould a piece of pottery, the movements that require the implication of their whole bodies in the landscape to snatch clay out of earth, to bring water, the postures adapted to smash bricks, blend and fashion clay, the long walks are all stories told by the body that reflect a certain way of being. Every gesture, be it used to achieve an activity of survival, is related to the symbolic dimension of the body. Dance or choreography is summoned in all their acts with the sole difference that the body here, especially the body in motion, is at the same time subject, object and instrument of its own skill. And from there another world perception and conscience emerges.
It is about realising that we were in the presence of all the elements that a dancer spends years working on. These workshops contributed to build a consciousness of the isolated parts of the body, to touch them, listen to them and feel the deep resounding of this aesthetic experience. This work allows the collective to understand the references and gestures which are the foundation of their aesthetic semantics, and within which their artworks are made. Such body experiences aggrandise the scale of desire. It is also about realising one’s own body through the perception of the body of the other in order to share inter-subjective experiences. It is about taking the time to listen to one’s body, to rub it, to close one’s eyes, to make experiments with a body in motion: it is a time that their task-laden bodies do not give them. And yet, this raw, almost gullible body, unconsciously worked out by their life experiences, puts us in front of a free, unhindered body that invents its own gesture. With the women potters of Sejnane, „the subject’s attitude” coincides with the subject itself. Their bodies talk like a textual entity, reflecting their thoughts, their past, their lives and their environment. It is dense, heavy, with a particular agility of the hands and a particular presence of each one of them. They carry by their bodies in motion the fingerprints or the traces of a body that was here, that triggered a state, a position, a light.
Translated by Translation: Dhouha Bokri
