I WILL
a poetic and political dance film on immigration
a project by:
Brazilian Butoh Dancer Will Lopes
Bosnian photographer Dino Rekanovic
Italian director Ilaria Vergani Bassi
in collaboration with .dɩtiramb
PROJECT
“I Will” is a poetic and political dance film on immigration. A reflection on the cultural, social and political concept of edges, borders, belonging, integration and acceptance. Based on the poetic testimony of an immigrant artist who has recently arrived in Europe, the project starts from a personal context, passes through social and political contexts to reach an archetypal level of conflict. Wouldn’t the migratory movement be part of human nature, currently imprisoned by cultural and political contexts? What are the margins for? What defines our borders? How to deal with these conflicts that are established in these intersections? A project by Italian film director Ilaria Vergani, Bosnian photographer Dino Rekanović, Brazilian Butoh Dancer Will Lopes and Vienna’s Contemporary Art Association Ditiramb. Following the development of fruitful works, realized jointly since 2018, the artists started from the combination of cinema, theater-dance, Butoh dance and Portrait photography to develop their next collective work in “I WILL – Foreign Portrait” a poetic and political art work. This work in progress has been developing since March 2021, with photo, video and performance experiments on the streets of Vienna.
“To be an immigrant”
The romantic dream about a better life in a new homeland and the reality established by cultural, social and political standards.
The deconstruction of pre-established ideal images. Cultural shocks. Imposition of rules, norms and laws.
The conflict between hopes and the aridity of daily urban life. Devourment, Assimilation, Transformation and Integration
processes. Integration? To be and not to be, to belong and not belong. These are some of the questions.
SYNOPSIS
A traveller just arrived in a new landscape. The fresh air and the exuberance of classic art !ll the picture of a new life. Cultural assimilation, devouring and digesting laws, rules and culture. In this frame, the central character, a traveller groom, seeks space to accommodate his luggage and express its content. The compression of the foreign body, the challenges unfolding in front of the “unknown”, “the other”, “the foreign”, “stranger”. Shock between parts, strangeness and integration. Integration ?
RESEARCH AND REFERENCE
SOUND:
We imagine a soundscape built from real world sounds, suggesting real life situations of a man traveling to a new homeland to marry. These real-life sounds are suggestively mixed with the narrative voice that seems to tell of the character’s flow of consciousness. The soundscape takes us into a musical composition inside and outside the protagonist’s perception. A poetic work essential for the dramaturgy of dance and for the story of the film.
BODY, VISUAL AND FILMIC LANGUAGE:
The film is studied as a continuous dialogue between the language of the body, image, sound and time which translates it to filmic terms. The dance of life is represented both choreographically through the Butoh dance, a discipline that is based on the embodiment of very specific elements, in this case the state of “non-belonging, migratory and finally integrated” and through the dance of filmic language. The element of photography is choreographically essential within the concept of framing and a thin border between fiction and reality. The result is a six-handed creative process, a dramaturgical co-creation of the three artists who work synergistically to the creation of a new and experimental language.
REFERENCES AND RESEARCH:
The film aims to be an experimental work and is inspired by multimedia creation techniques ranging from photographic wet plate collodion technique, used by the photographer Dino Rekanovic, to Butoh Dance especially the art of Kazuo Ohono, to the filmic work of artists such as Marina Abramovich and Alejandro Jodorowsky . Also the use of archival footage is another experimental tool that we aim to integrate choreographically into editing as in the experimental films of Koyaanisqatsi or Adam Curtis.
