22.11.2009

Moura : You can answer me "what moves ou" ?

Michelle : What moves me is this question! What I have done is to create a series of body's fictions, or personal mythologies, like naming all "things" present in a place as "body", me person, carpet, chair, etc. Put my body of people in the same status of the body of a carpet, generated on me the desire to make my body space, make move the floor and see the movement of the time operating transformations in the space, in the body, in all things. So, to produce visibilities in these abstract ideas, I creates situations using some keywords as transformation, deformations, precarious, unstable.

Moura : Fiction, mythology... you talk about developing a poetic...

Michelle : Mythologies, are fictions, which are elements that make up my vision about things. And the way how I organize all of this, have the goal of communicating, so this is waht I call poetic. I fell pleasure to keep working on this and is still earning a shape.

Moura : You said that you create "situations" from some keywords like "transformation" ? Can you exemplify that ?

Michelle : Situations are estrategies. What I do is to render different strategies to generate visibility to transformations. Situation is a word that helps to keep open some ideas... Sometimes I'm afraid to say that I'm making a piece, dance, performance. Situation keeps the idea of HOM, tool, device. But one situation can be a performance, at last, one thing does not exclude the other. The experience can be the work.

Moura : So, which are the situation, or strategies, that you are using ?

Michelle : Many,is not easy to write, because one is inside the other... One is situation is a practice of movement. The movement is a strategy to transform perceptual and presence states. And to move I have other strategies, some really physical, like moving the eyes in a disorganized way, other are self-suggestive, like, be moved by spirits, both have the function of producing some changes into my body condition. Always works.

Moura : In my opinion, crawl under the dance floor or slipping on the soap, are more concrete strategies to talk about transformation.

Michelle: That's right, are very different strategies. I think the movement's situation should be dealing with changes of consciousness, and ground's situations should be dealing with matters ... And once again I wonder "what is body,"What moves me". Understand ?

Moura: Sounds confuse. I understand more or less, it seems that you separate body and mind. You have a cartesian vision ?

Michelle: I think my body has the power to manage changes in my consciousness, this is concrete. If I slow down my movements to walk for 01 hours, I will achieve a change in my body state which of course changes / transforms my consciousness. My tone changes, it's concrete, and change my mind. Understand? It is all together. I'm talking about my vision, from my experience. Years ago, I heard things through Andre Lepecki about Spinoza, and I think it's suitable for the way I'm understanding things at that time : "Body is a relational entity that transforms your around and transforms itself. That's why body unfinished and temporary ".

Moura : Ok, Espinosa has one foot in cartesianism and Descartes the two feet.

Michelle : I don't understand what you are talking about ... For me the most interesting is the idea of "relationship" and unfinished. What move us is a "relationship". Cause and effects in the plural, or defects.

Moura : "Relationship" announced well to me this idea of transformation ... and now I understand better why you use other words as unstable and precarious...

Michelle : Great !

Moura : But still do not understand what you are doing ...

Michelle : I develop a poetic or fictions about the body. I have a daily practice focused on the movement as key to change presence state, which I share with people, or offering it to them to move with me, or inviting them to watch me. I'm working in a performance called BIGBANGBOOM, which got this name during the residency that I did this summer in Dance Forum, Lisbon. I'm starting to work in an installation of a friend of Curitiba that I'll re-do here in Angers, where he provides a space with soap for the "public '" walk on. Each of these situations are food for them all.